NEW YORK - All 13-year-old boys are on board with "Family Guy." They love this show and no wonder. It's silly, subversive and caters to a 13-year-old boy's endless craving for humor about bodily emissions.
Among this particular demo, the fact that "Family Guy" is also breathtakingly smart is just a bonus (or even beside the point). But the deft blend of the ingenious with the raw helps account for its much broader appeal, as it taps into every viewer's inner 13-year-old boy -- which, whatever your age and gender, is the easiest point of entry into the show's garden of delights. (This Fox animated series airs at 9 p.m. EDT Sundays, as well as on TBS and Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.)
As a "Family Guy" fan who's long past preadolescence, I crack up watching it. I cringe. I ask myself, How do they come up with this stuff? And I find I'm in synch with it to a degree I might prefer not acknowledging in polite company.
I don't mean "Family Guy" necessarily mirrors my thinking. But it anticipates what I'm capable of thinking, if I were observant and twisted enough to see what it sees unassisted.
In its absurd incongruities, the show catalogs the detritus of modern life. In its devilish flights of fancy, it targets how things might be, if the world were only slightly more deranged.
No room here on "Family Guy" for niceties. So I give its excesses a pass. I embrace its wicked randomness. I feel grateful from the bottom of my inner 13-year-old boy's heart.
Item: Here's God as a bearded, white-robed ladies man hitting on a girl at a bar. He lights her cigarette with a bolt of lightning. "Magic fingers," he purrs. But then, to his chagrin, an inadvertent second bolt of lightning incinerates her. He summons his son Jesus ("Get the Escalade, we're outta here!") and makes a fast exit.
A little less provocative is a spoof of the farewell scene from "The Wizard of Oz": Dorothy ticks off the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion when she tells the Scarecrow, "I think I'll miss YOU most of all."
"Sort of a weird comment," mutters the Lion indignantly, "right in front of all of us."
These are examples of the cutaway sight gags and comic asides booby-trapping "Family Guy," making each episode's story line feel hyperlinked to out-of-nowhere bits of foolishness. (Cookie Monster in an asylum battling his cookie addiction. Dick Cheney as a foul-mouthed greeter at Wal-Mart.)
But through it all, the basic setting is the Peter Griffin homestead in Quahog, R.I.
Peter is a cheery, melon-bellied dolt. He is married to randy redhead Lois, a closet kook who indulges Peter's almost limitless shortcomings.
Teenage son Chris is not only slovenly and overweight, but, by every indication, mentally disabled. Dowdy daughter Meg hates herself (her parents hate her more).
Stewie is a pint-sized megalomanic, raging at humanity with an aristocrat's haughtiness. ("Fie on your toilet!" the diapered toddler blasts his elders on the issue of potty-training -- "it's made slaves of you all!")
The only character who can hear Stewie is Brian, the Griffins' dog, who stands upright, speaks several languages, reads the paper and likes his martinis dry. He has an unrequited lust for Lois, but otherwise, his tastes are of those of a sophisticate.
Peter and his family have an unapologetic cartoonishness that, in contrast, makes "The Simpsons" seem entrenched in everyday reality. The characters on "Family Guy" seem infinitely adaptable to any situation, ready for anything to put a joke across.
As the vision of Seth MacFarlane (the show's creator, who's also a producer, writer and does numerous voices), "Family Guy" isn't above the gratuitous cheap shot. (Sarah Jessica Parker's face "looks like a foot," Peter complains.)
But it also has the brass to present Osama Bin Laden -- seen taping a fierce new video message to "all American infidels" -- as a fatuous showoff. After he stumbles over the word "Ramadan," instead saying "Radaman," he bursts into laughter. He can't control his giggles, egged on by his off-camera crew.
"Look at who's snickering over THERE," he chuckles helplessly -- "Mr. I-Can't-Do-a-Suicide-Bombing-Cause-I'm-Sick! He got a note from his doctor!"
"Family Guy" mocks politics, pop culture, celebrity, show-biz shtick and TV in particular, beginning with a sitcom sendup as Peter and Lois, at their piano, sing the theme song: "... Where are those good old-fashioned values on which we used to rely? Lucky there's a Family Guy ..."
Sex, race, physical infirmities, AIDS, pedophilia, Anne Frank, British bad teeth, the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, plus those good old-fashioned values -- on "Family Guy," nothing seems out of bounds.
Parts of "Family Guy" are simply brilliant. A near minutelong, wordless interlude where Peter struggles to dispose of a dead bullfrog has the artistry of Chaplin.
Not so high-minded: The instrumental "Dueling Banjoes" is re-imagined with Peter and portly filmmaker Michael Moore, unseen behind the doors of adjoining bathroom stalls (attention: 13-year-old boys!), in a performance of dueling flatulence.
Like so much of "Family Guy," it's rude, crude and deliciously wrong.
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On the Net:
http://www.fox.com
http://www.tbs.com
http://www.adultswim.com
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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org
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