Review: Family Guy “Fat Actor”
Overview
Peter tries to protest Hollywood after learning that Brad Pitt was cast in a biopic about a politician; after Pitt injures himself on set, Peter must act out the role himself.
Cutaways
Kanye West, Sitting On A Hamster, Abe Lincoln, Jeremy Renner, Business Drama, Civil War
Our Take
Fun fact: when writer Mark Hentemann isn’t writing Family Guy episodes, this guy runs a $200m real estate investment firm, so when we actually do get episodes from the guy who co-created Bordertown, I guess he just does this for kicks now?
In any event, Mark checks in with the penultimate episode of the season and it’s classic Family Guy satire on a modern-Hollywood problem that is poignant but not savage enough for my tastes. Maybe it’s the beer talking, but if I was writing this episode with this subject matter it would’ve been a 22-minute middle-finger fest to Mike Henry (notice he was conveniently not even in this week’s episode, but Arif Zaffir was which gives me all of the feels).
At first I was going to dock this week’s episode for not getting Brad Pitt to voice himself but changed my mind half-way through when we started getting into some controversial Pittance which was far funnier and really hearkens back to this show’s glory days. Yes, there’s some savagery here, but is it the DGAF savagery for the show’s early years? It’s close, and I know how Seth MacFarlane feels on this issue and would’ve liked to have heard whether or not he had punched up the script a tad more and maybe give us some Disney nods while we’re at it.
The cutaways were plentiful this week, but for my money, I was having a lot more fun with the plot this week and really the only two take-a-way gags featured Kanye and Jeremy Renner (the latter was definitely on another level). The movie-making montage was excellent and as a fat guy from NJ the Chris Christie short hit close to home. Family Guy’s been pretty good since it’s moved to Wednesday Nights, I may not want it to move from this spot.
Short of getting Roiland back, which I'm sure isn't going to happen, I don't even think they could get much better than the new voices from the previous season. And the ratings for season 7 weren't much lower on average than for season 6; it was pretty much just a normal season-to-season drop that most likely would have happened regardless.
I mean, look at the actual averages:
Season 1 - 1.57 million viewers Season 2 - 1.97 million viewers Season 3 - 2.33 million viewers Season 4 - 1.52 million viewers Season 5 - 0.96 million viewers Season 6 - 0.56 million viewers Season 7 - 0.42 million viewers
Ever since season 3, it had been having steep drops even with Roiland still involved; the season 6 to 7 drop is actually the smallest-percentage drop it's had since it started dropping, and if anything it's possible that changing the voice actors actually *boosted* interest a bit and prevented it from dropping even more.