Family Guy’s 21st season seems like a season that is attempting to mature into a responsibly drinking adult. The oddity of it all is that networks like Freeform and FXX tout record ratings with Family Guy reruns, and I have to admit, whenever I look at older seasons, new episodes of Family Guy seem way tamer by comparison. Gone are the days of the show just feasting on celebrities’ shortcomings, doing parodies of Star Wars, and episodes rife with cutaway gags. Even more long gone, Stewie’s attempts to kill Lois, Quagmire trying to get laid, and really any remnants from the Cleveland Brown family.
Not all of the changes are bad. Arif Zahir is really the only replacement voice actor I have enjoyed from white actor purge of 2020 and that’s across every series that made those ridiculous changes in the first place. Other actors like Jay Pharoah, Chris Parnell, Gary Cole, and more have been brought to the forefront and let their respective characters shine not unlike what The Simpsons does with its denizens of actors. Unfortunately, it comes as a loss to fans of characters like Tricia Takanawa, Mort Goldman, and the entirety of the cast of The Cleveland Show being put out to pasture which sucks because those were all quality characters that were hilarious in their own right.
For 2023, a lot of plots seemed to center around apps, more specifically the second half of 2023, and maybe that’s just the norm for now on because the writers have been scared safe. No longer do we get to see episodes written by the Gary Janettis or the Andrew Goldbergs or Cherry Chevapravatdumrongs. Even the one controversial bit that Family Guy did this season, the two-part Russian finale, failed to deliver strong ratings because nowhere was it marketed as a two-parter and more-so, we would’ve been served better had the show taken those plots from “From Russia With Love” and “Adult Education” and just put them into one episode thereby ramping up marketing efforts toward a plot that’s very contemporary and hopefully wrapping the season with a bang. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the numerous episodes surrounding apps, but jeez, if you’re going to go hard and in the paint on a contemporary plot, go hard in the paint from all facets of show production.
I don’t know if Family Guy will ever recapture the “I don’t give a fuck” attitude of the show’s yester-years, it seems unlikely. The Disney-owned series is very much under the auspices of a more left-leaning producers as opposed to the more centrist-skewing efforts of seasons’ past and the proof is in the pudding as Family Guy’s 21st season wrapped with two of the lowest-rated entries in the franchise’s history. Sure, FOX changing the time slots quite a bit during the season’s final months wasn’t helping anything, but if you build it, they will come. The near 50% drop in the ratings year over year (even whence comparing the season premiere to the season finale) certainly exemplifies the “Go Woke, Go Broke” strategies put into place a couple of seasons ago. Maybe some of these temporary changes involving the producers of the show responding to the WGA strike should be a bit more permanent with new writers and producers that might be hungrier.