Written by Mike Bruno
I am not here to debate the differences between The Simpsons and Family Guy; save it for your late-night blog ranting with those five other fools from your losing fantasy football team. I’m here to review Family Guy: Volume 10 created by one of my favorite smartasses of all time, Seth MacFarlane. I have to say it took me a few years to warm up to this adult version of The Simpsons (going to get a lot of static for that I bet) but once I did, I realized the genius of madman MacFarlane.
Fourteen episodes on three disc; that’s what Fox is throwing down the throats of its avid fans, who if they weren’t too stoned or drunk, saw each and every one of these episodes. These are from last season, and I do have to say, “The Road to the North Pole,” “The Big Bang Theory,” and “Halloween on Spooner Street” were my favorites. “Road..” is the one where Stewie sets out to off Santa only to realize the old myth’s job is more of an insane tweaker weekend ordeal than the joy we all are led to believe. The music for it was created by a master musician Ron Jones, who gets some time in the spotlight in his own featurette, and would fit in almost any holiday classic you will probably see on TV this coming Christmas.
The scene which really made me crack up had to be in “Halloween” where Meg plays spin the bottle and ends up making out with her brother Chris. It’s total low-brow humor but the end of the episode pulls in the high-brow when Chris brags to Peter that he made out with a girl at the Halloween party. Meg chimes in that she made out with a boy and maybe he’ll call, with her brother’s immediate response “don’t count on it.” MacFarlane and his court of merry jesters have their timing down impeccably and that scene proved it.
What everyone wants to know about are the extras. Well, let me say there are plenty of those. Six episodes have commentary, if you want to put that on, and the commentary comes from one or two crew members. For those who want to understand more on how this series has been created, some of these are very valuable, some not so much. There are also looks at the fight in “German Guy;” scene animatics, two from “Trading Places” and the other from “Baby, You Knock Me Out;” and video of Adam West receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Deleted scenes are also apart of the extras, most are one or two scenes, maybe an extra 30- or 45-seconds long. Wow, Fox, think you can spare the disc space. I am sure there were many other snips left on the cutting room floor, and you cats couldn’t just pop in a few more? One last thing, why they kept the cuts where the commercial breaks are is very annoying. A pause for creative purposes is understandable but why leave the blank spot on the DVD. What, in case any of us have to take a pee?
Here’s how I see it: if you’re a Family Guy fanatic like my roommate, and you have a space to put it, this set is something to have. Each episode has its own hilarity and though most of it does look like it has been ripped off from older television shows, MacFarlane gives a better sense of its present form bringing forth a kind of renaissance of what was once taboo.
