Review: Family Guy “Married… With Cancer”

Family Guy kicks off the seventeenth season with a story about marriage and death, so are we committed to the series or is it on its way out?

Overview:

Brian is having trouble facing the fact that he is getting old and having trouble connecting with the youth of today. His bitterness is precisely what he needs to attract a young woman who has been diagnosed with cancer. As her condition worsens, Brian tries to make her dreams come true by taking her on as his wife.

In a shocking turn of events, it turns out that his new wife is going to survive. Brian quickly regrets tying the knot, as his partner is not who he thought she was. And, just as Brian believes he may have found his way out, another surprise ends the show. Meaning, Brian may be going into season 17 married to his new partner, Jess.

Our Take:

Family Guy enters its impressive seventeenth season. While The Simpsons enters its third decade, nobody would have guessed that both of these shows would continue to be going as strong as they are. Seventeen years is a testament to the humour and intelligence that has carried the series through competition and the slow decline of cable television. What’s more is this was a show that was cancelled after the second season and has managed to stay alive long after. It seems that as long as Fox is still on the air, they will invest in their consistent Sunday night adult animation line-up.

One thing that separates Family Guy from many of the other long-running animated sitcoms is their ability to shake up the status quo. For as long as the show has been on the air Brian’s being single and lonely has allowed for many plots and episodes. Entering this year with Brian now invested in an unhappy marriage changes the game and allows for all new themes and stories. Though, you never know with Family Guy, this could be the new norm going forward, or they could make this a two-part saga that ends with Brian sad and lonely once again. Either way, it’ll be entertaining.

In all honesty, this was not the way that I hoped the season would kick-off. As fans, there are always expectations when a series comes back from the summer. It’s not that this wasn’t a decent episode, there is just a hope that every year a series such as this will step up its game and come in with something big. This episode was very driven by Brian’s plot and lacked many other character appearances and the cutscenes that the show is famous for. Not that I don’t enjoy a good character-focused story, just that I have been waiting for a new episode of Family Guy all summer long and it would have been great to watch one of the non-traditional episodes that help to separate the series from everything else on television.

It may be the disappointment that this episode didn’t offer us more, but I had a difficult time getting into the show. I love a good Brian focused story, but there needs to be a balance of humour. If they allowed more room for a side story involving Stewie or Peter they could have added more of the obscene randomness that we hope to see when we watch Family Guy. I am not a big fan of when this show aims more at being a sitcom than being an animated comedy. There are still plenty of episodes this year, and I hope that many of them will be pleasantly surprising, but this was not the best way to start the year off.