With Family Guy almost finished its 20th season, 23 years, and over 380 episodes into its run, the animated comedy juggernaut can officially be marked as having been a bad show for twice as long as it was ever great. This series about a middle-class worker, Peter Griffin (voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane), and his family living in Quahog, Rhode Island, became an instant hit when it aired on Fox in 1999. Though it burst onto tv screens as a lively and transgressive satire of television tropes, Family Guy wore out its welcome years ago.
Once a triumph for its use of cutaway gags, non-sequiturs, and frenetic pacing, with the help of multiple cancellations and the constant replacement of writers, Family Guy has lost any relevance it once had. It’s hard to choose which episodes are the worst, considering there are dozens that never elicit a laugh, yet some are so difficult to sit through that they physically make viewers cringe.
10) “Dog Bites Bear” (Season 16, Ep 11)
If you’re familiar with late-stage Family Guy, you’re aware of how frequently they recycle the same basic storylines with a few minor changes. Look no further than how many episodes consist of Stewie (MacFarlane) fighting another version of himself or how frequently Peter gets into a fistfight with the celebrity guest-star of the week. “Dog Bites Bear” contains a regurgitated storyline we’ve seen many times before in “Road to Rupert” and “Total Recall” and would continue to see in “Island Adventure” and “Lawyer Guy.”
Even though it's not an offensively lousy episode, what makes “Dog Bites Bear” so unwatchable is how boring it is. Though barely over 20 minutes, it feels an hour in length. The A-story starring Stewie and Brian (MacFarlane) demonstrates Family Guy trying to be touching and dramatic while failing miserably. The B story shows a subplot involving Peter, which simultaneously rips off plots from previous Simpsons and Futurama episodes. The only positive is a fun Danny Trejo cameo, but it’s so inconsequential that it can’t save the episode.
9) "Cutaway Land" (Season 19, Ep 1)
Based on the premise alone, “Cutaway Land” has every advantage to be a fantastic episode. Lois and Peter set up the same cutaway gag simultaneously, trapping them inside Cutaway Land, a world between worlds where they can jump between any cutaway gag they can imagine. Like “Road to the Multiverse” before it, the premise of “Cutaway Land” allows for endless joke potential and a free palette to have the characters jump to any comedic scenario imaginable. Unfortunately, the results are aggressively unfunny.
One thing that stands out in “Cutaway Land” is the extreme laziness on display, not only in writing but in the animation itself. The background extras are more lifeless than ever, and the production design feels completely lacking in creativity. It also features an abundance of the late Family Guy trope of “characters explaining the joke to the camera.” After a joke, the characters will spend double the amount of time explaining why you should find it funny.
8) “Holly Bibble" (Season 18, Ep 19)
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Since its conception, Family Guy has repeatedly been accused of blatantly copying The Simpsons, yet never has it been so apparent in the Season 18 episode “Holly Bibble.” “Holly Bibble” is just a rehash of the season 10 The Simpsons episode “Bible Stories.” Much like “Bible Stories,” “Holly Bibble” features three bible stories, but with the Family Guy cast slotted in as the biblical characters. The first segment contains Peter and Lois (Alex Borstein) as Adam and Eve, a replica of The Simpsons episode where Homer and Marge acted the parts.
Imitating The Simpsons isn’t the only sin here, “Holly Bibble” is home to some of the most dated jokes about the bible possible. Ricky Gervais was making the same observations in his stand-up shows back in 2003, while Monty Python was making far more subversive jokes at the expense of Christianity 50 years ago in their film, Life of Brian. Almost every joke is telegraphed a mile away, and there is no point where the show deviates into something fresh or original.
7) "Forget-Me-Not" (Season 10, Ep 17)
When students take a screenwriting class, the first thing they’ll be taught is to never end a story with “it was all just a dream.” This trope is almost exclusively used when bad writers can’t come up with a satisfying conclusion to their story. Family Guy has used this gimmick several times throughout its run, most famously in the episode “Lois Kills Stewie,” but it’s never been so insulting as in “Forget Me Not.” While driving, Peter, Joe (Patrick Warburton), Quagmire (MacFarlane), and Brian get into an accident, resulting in all of them forgetting who they are. To add insult to injury, they find they are the only people left on earth, leaving them to figure out who they are.
“Forget-Me-Not” is a high concept episode in Season 10, when Family Guy was trying to freshen up their formula, which had long since become stale. “Forget-Me-Not” contains the characters pondering questions aloud to which there’s no answer besides “it was all in their heads.” The influence of The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation is evident, but Family Guy cheapens out and doesn’t resolve anything. What could be an intriguing experiment is an exercise in frustration and dourness.
6) "Life of Brian" (Season 12, Ep 6)
Before Season 12, Fox announced that a major character would die in an upcoming episode. In "Life of Brian,” Brian dies when he’s hit by a car. The death of Brian was so controversial that over 127,000 fans petitioned for Family Guy to bring Brian back. The death of Brian shouldn’t have been why fans were furious, though; their anger should have been directed at the episode’s lack of funny jokes. An episode about death can be funny; in the South Park episodes "Stanleys' Cup" and "Kenny Dies," the show examines depressing subject matters while also being hilarious.
What makes this episode so egregious is how cynical it is. Primetime TV shows often resorted to killing main characters when they needed a publicity boost, but here it’s such a blatant cash-grab. It wasn’t even a month later that the show brought back Brian. Family Guy takes roughly a year to produce, so regardless of the success of “Life of Brian,” they were always going to bring him back. Though this publicity stunt worked well and tricked many fans into vocalizing their support for a character in a show well past its prime, it feels like an indolent con-job.
5) "Tales of Former Sports Glory" (Season 19, Ep 20)
As Family Guy’s run continued, three-part episodes became increasingly common. Writing three 6-minute stories is easier than sustaining one story for half an hour. And so, some of the worst episodes of the show were born, including “Rock Hard,” “Holly Bibble,” and “Tales of Former Sports Glory.” Peter and his friends regale each other with stories of their (exaggerated) histories as sports champions. That’s it. The storylines are so predictable that it’s apparent how little effort went into them. Quagmire mentions that he was a famous tennis player, so it’s easy to guess that his segment would feature him as John McEnroe, which turns out to be the case. The third story is Rocky, but Peter plays the part of Rocky Balboa. There is no punchline other than “Isn’t it funny that Peter is Rocky?”
The first two segments don’t even have a conclusion; they just cut to commercial before they could write an exciting climax. Almost every joke in the episode consists of Cleveland (Mike Henrey Season 1-19, Arif Zahir Season 20 -), Quagmire, or Peter narrating a joke, followed by that joke being immediately repeated a second time by the visuals.
4) "Wild Wild West" (Season 19, Ep 7)
Famous Batman actor and camp icon Adam West played a deranged, fictional version of himself until he died in 2017. With his passing, Quahog started looking for a new Mayor. Enter Sam Elliot, playing a rugged cowboy named "Wild" West, Adam West’s cousin. In “Wild Wild West,” elections are held in which Wild West becomes the most beloved figure in town due to his chiseled good looks and gravelly voice. If you don’t consider ‘Sam Elliot saying mundane things in a deep voice’ hilarious, this episode doesn’t have much to offer you.
Wild West as a character is just a lazy excuse from the writers to weave old Chuck Norris jokes into the show so they don’t have to come up with anything new. There are only so many ways someone can criticize a performance for being unfunny, but this is the most significant flaw in any poorly executed comedy script. None of the grievances would matter if the episodes themselves elicited a laugh, but “Wild Wild West” is an incredibly humorless episode, with a tacked-on song at the end to stretch the runtime.
3: "Thanksgiving" (Season 10, Ep 6)
The Griffins hold a Thanksgiving Day celebration for all their friends and family. Everything is thrown upside down when Joe’s son, Kevin (Scott Grimes), comes home after deserting his duties as a soldier in Iraq. The rest of the episode is a preachy melodrama with both pro-war and anti-war talking points. “Thanksgiving” is like if you took the Cameron Diaz movie The Last Supper and replaced every intelligent line with either a fart joke or a pretentious speech.
Quagmire's transgender mother, Ida (MacFarlane), who almost exclusively is portrayed as a punchline to be mocked (Stewie calls her a “monster” early in the episode), delivers an unearned, moralizing lecture to Kevin about the importance of loyalty. Every dramatic moment rings hollow, transparent in its attempt for Family Guy to be viewed as something more substantive. For a show that insists on how provocative and thoughtful it is, Family Guy sure handles serious topics with the tact and profundity of a soap opera. This, along with other bad episodes like “Excellence in Broadcasting” and “Trump Guy,” is a perfect example of how current-day Family Guy is not clever enough to handle consequential political commentary.
2) “HTTPete” (Season 16, Ep 18)
When a TV show has been around as long as Family Guy, it’s inevitable it will need to address how the world has evolved since its inception. South Park and Always Sunny have cultivated younger audiences while remaining fresh to their original fans. Family Guy, however, has regressed from an edgy, ahead of the curve program to an obsolete dinosaur. “HTTPete” explores Peter becoming friends with a millennial social media manager, which is a decent premise. Unfortunately, the execution comes across as a petty gripe from Family Guy writers, upset that they’ve been accused of being out of touch for the last decade. There is plenty to make fun of millennials and young people, but regurgitating talking points from boomer Facebook memes is scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Family Guy has always been criticized for its reliance on pop-culture references. This episode is entirely internet references, which age worse than milk in the desert sun. They even manage to squeeze in an avocado-on-toast reference. “HTTPete” already felt outdated when it was released. It’s caught up in the American culture war of 2015 despite being released in mid-2018. The entire ordeal feels as if it was written by a particularly disgruntled Bill Maher, with dated social media references and a weirdly defensive mindset.
1) "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q" (Season 10, Ep 3)
Few TV half hours were as savagely torn apart by critics as “Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q.” After Quagmire almost dies in an accident, his sister Brenda (Kaitlin Olson) comes to stay with him, as does her verbally and physically abusive boyfriend Jeff (Ralph Garman). Fed up with seeing his sister constantly victimized, Quagmire sets out to murder Jeff. If you’re confused about how this is the plot of a comedy show, you’re not alone. The very notion that modern-day Family Guy can pull off an episode with this subject matter is more laughable than any joke Family Guy has produced in the last ten years.
Any subject can be skewered for comedy if done intelligently. The Whitest Kids U' Know and F is for Family are great examples of comedies that make jokes about extremely dark matters, but Family Guy post-Season 7 can’t hold a candle to them. It’s genuinely hard to sit through the entire 20 minutes due to the extreme tone-deafness of the writing. It’s cringe-worthy to watch something fail so miserably that has such lofty ambitions. Like “Thanksgiving,” it wants to have its cake and eat it too, teeto-ing between brutal scenes of violence and silly jokes about zits. Another tragic victim of this episode is the wasted talent of the irreplaceable Kaitlin Olson. One of the funniest voices in comedy TV is relegated to an abuse victim with no jokes. From conception to execution, “Screams of Silence” is an embarrassing mess and the worst episode of Family Guy.