Family Guy (Season 8-Present)

Family Guy is an American animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their anthropomorphic pet dog, Brian. The show is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island. Since the Season 7 episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", however, the show, which used to be a smash hit, has later become criticized by critics and audiences for many reasons, and these seasons have gone down as one of the worst examples of Seasonal Rot.

Why It Sucks Now

 * 1) In one of the most tragic negative-180's in television, the writing downgraded from being clever to completely atrocious and catastrophic, almost to the point of irredeemability. It's even worse when knowing that the writing staff behind this show is huge, with 14 writers and a multi-million dollar budget (more specifically, $2 million), both of which are impressive for a TV series, and yet they come up with this stuff.
 * 2) * Not only that, but the writers also clearly lack any respect for the fans or the audience in general, like how they decided to kill off Brian because he was hated so much and then bring him back two episodes later. They did absolutely nothing to redeem Brian's flanderization and just kept him just as, maybe even more unlikable, yet the creators make it clear that, in a way, they can kill him once and if the audience gets mad, they have the power to do it again. This is a tactic known as "leverage."
 * 3) * In fact, the writing has resulted in so many terrible episodes from these seasons that there are too many to list, to the point that like the SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, these Family Guy episodes once cluttered the wiki with their individual pages before they were all removed and sub-sequentially banned on this wiki. They were later relocated to the Horrible TV Show Episodes Wiki.
 * 4) ** The most infamous examples include "Herpe, the Love Sore," "You Can't Handle The Booth!", "Seahorse Seashell Party," "Fresh Heir," "Brian's a Bad Father," "Peter-Assment," "The 2000-Year-Old Virgin", "Quagmire's Dad," "Screams of Silence," and "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", the latter being so bad that Seth MacFarlane himself regretted making it.
 * 5) ** This is also not helped by the fact that the 12th and 17th seasons only sped up the show's decline in quality, including one of Season 17's episodes, "Trump Guy," which almost looked like the show had a crossover episode with "Our Cartoon President."
 * 6) There are several problems with the characters, many of whom are now unlikable, flanderized, and/or horribly hopeless (especially the Griffin family).
 * 7) * Peter went from a silly doofus and likable father who cares a lot about his family and is incredibly respectful to Meg (one episode involved him saying he'd take a bullet for her) into an unlikable malicious, idiotic, monstrous, and incredibly abusive and insensitive psychopath who does illegal and evil things in almost every episode and is always excused for his actions as he's said to do that stuff out of idiocy, even though that's not true. He is also a rotten friend. Shooting Joe in the eye once and shooting Quagmire in the arm.
 * 8) * Brian went from a smart-mouthed but likable voice-of-reason dog to a self-absorbed, pretentious, alcoholic, egotistical douche-bag and "occasionally" atheist fundamentalist (in other words, essentially Seth MacFarlane's political soapbox) that tells lies to get attractive women to like him, thinks religions are purely evil, and their followers are idiots even though not all of them are like that. He is a conniving and ungrateful scoundrel who will do anything to advance any of his careers, especially if it means hurting his loved ones, screwing over the people who helped him, or letting people die. He's also a massive hypocrite by saying Lois having an affair with anyone other than him is wrong.
 * 9) * Lois went from a nice and compassionate wife of Peter Griffin to a short-tempered, immature dominatrix wanna-be who sometimes abuses Peter, acts like she has control over Peter's life, is a massive hypocrite who calls Peter out on things "she's" guilty of. She's an even bigger karma Houdini than Peter.
 * 10) * Chris went from a normal, kind, slightly-dimwitted teenager who is an incredibly talented artist to a completely-dimwitted, uninteresting character who's only known for just masturbating all the time, known for going full idiot mode and is only used when Peter has had too much screen time. But he didn't see too much decline in character.
 * 11) * Meg went from a normal girl wanting to make friends to getting routinely abused, until she finally snapped, such as trying to date rape a gay boy, stalking Brian at the prom, or engaging in a deadly fight at the school cafeteria. However, since Season 14 she's been abused less often.
 * 12) * Stewie went from being an evil genius to being a flamboyant gay stereotype. Though eventually, he got better in the later seasons, as he retained his original personality. Throughout how worse Family Guy has gotten, he is one of the few characters that was still likable throughout (mostly).
 * 13) * Quagmire went from a funny and somewhat perverted ladies' man to a complete pervert who is used for little more than sex humor and has his perverted qualities exaggerated.
 * 14) ** In fact, he has also developed an unexplained hatred towards Brian. Not because of anything personal, because he's become a surrogate for the fans that started hating Brian heavily. If you watch the clip where Quagmire reveals why he hates Brian, you'll notice that there is nothing related that involves Quagmire.
 * 15) * Joe went from a strong and confident police officer who was a good role model to a crutch for cruel handicap jokes, an old groaner who screams way too much, and a cowardly spineless cop who lets Peter get away with everything and never arrests him for any lawbreaking acts like shooting Joe in the eye with a BB gun, and for giving his daughter a raspberry in the "wrong place." What also doesn't help is that in the newer seasons, he gets way too much screen time. It's like the writers have a new motto: when in doubt, shove Joe into the scene.
 * 16) * Bonnie went from Joe's caring and supportive wife to someone who openly wants to cheat on Joe and wishes to kill him. The biggest example of Bonnie wanting to cheat on Joe is the episode "Foreign Affair" which the main plot of the episode is Bonnie wanting to have an affair in Paris.
 * 17) * The character of Ida, Quagmire's trans mother, only exists just so the writers could make transphobic 'jokes', such as how not once after her sex change has she been referred to as a woman. What makes this way, way worse is that Seth MacFarlane described her introductory episode as "the most sympathetic portrayal of a transgender person", when in reality, it was anything but sympathetic. If anything, the entire episode spent its time mocking the transgender community.
 * 18) * A lot more of the male characters fall under the Unfair Sex trope, which is where the male characters are meant to be seen as evil scumbags that are to blame for everything, while the female characters are to be rooted for because they are portrayed as angels by the writers.
 * 19) * Sometimes, the show introduces a new character and then immediately either kills them off or just throws them aside with little to no character development. Notable examples include Vinny, a new dog the Griffins get when Brian dies, and Jess, a young woman Brian marries who is killed off after two episodes.
 * 20) * Speaking of character development, none of that (not even redemption) is given to the characters in any of the episodes. And when there is, it's all but forgotten in the following episode, despite this show's episodes being canon.
 * 21) Some episodes are offensive and mock tragedies in an unfunny taste.
 * 22) * Most notably, the show makes many references to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which is pretty tasteless, since Seth MacFarlane, the show's creator, almost died on that day by missing the flight that would've headed towards the World Trade Center. Making fun of a tragic event in which your show's creator could've been killed is not funny!
 * 23) Nearly every single emotional or dramatic moment falls flat or is very hypocritical and insincere due to its mean-spirited tone, and use of humor at wrong moments. Like the scene in "Life of Brian" where a squirrel kicks and spits on Brian right after he gets run over by a car, the lady hitting Joe with her purse at Brian's funeral, Quagmire watching baseball on his phone during the funeral, although it's somewhat justified as he hates Brian.
 * 24) Most of the episodes have misguided morals (like "Peter-assment" and "Love Blacktually").
 * 25) Most of the endings to the episodes range from unsatisfying and mean-spirited to even misleading.
 * 26) * In one episode, "No Giggity, No Doubt," Quagmire starts growing more of a character with his new daughter, Courtney, saying he's going to be more of a father to her. Still, in the episodes after that, he's back to his usual, sex-craving self, and the writers completely wrote out Courtney with no explanation, as if she never existed.
 * 27) * Another example is in "The Heartbreak Dog", when Brian apologises to Joe for kissing his wife Bonnie. Instead of Joe accepting Brian's apology, the former just abuses Brian for the entire episode and even shoots him in the leg in the ending.
 * 28) The fourth wall is broken WAY too much in several episodes (like "The Unkindest Cut," and "Trump Guy"), which has gotten old quickly.
 * 29) There are a lot of problems with its humor, jokes, and gags:
 * 30) * The humor, in general, is either disgusting, confusing, mean-spirited, or over-reliant on pop culture references and cutaway gags. For example, jokes of school shootings, suicide, domestic abuse, animal abuse and terrorism are all present.
 * 31) * The abuse jokes towards Meg are just unfunny, mean-spirited, and overused, making the characters seem even more unlikable.
 * 32) * Some jokes tend to drag on for way, and we mean way, too long. A great example of this is in the episode "Send In Stewie, Please," where Stewie goes and explains his doctor's love life, which goes on for a whopping SIX minutes.
 * 33) * There is also overuse of toilet humor and fart jokes, like Peter having musical farts who he uses to sing the Sanford and Son theme song, or even being a ghost made out of a dog's fart.
 * 34) * It even overuses shock humor and gore, much like this movie for example, but even worse.
 * 35) ** Not to mention, some of the graphic imagery is just outright disgusting and disturbing, such as a scene in the episode "Peter Problems" where Peter kills a beached whale with a forklift truck.
 * 36) * Most of the time, the characters have to explain the jokes and gags, sometimes before they even happen, which just ruins the humor entirely.
 * 37) ** I.E. Lois Griffin: "Expect me to do a lot of sour-faced, arms folded head shaking." - Then she does that. (Are you there god? it's me, peter)
 * 38) * The show relies too much on overly long gags and plays them out for too long that it ends up ruining the joke, like the "Star Wars" parody trilogy. "Blue Harvest" was originally meant to be a single episode that was intended to be a joke as a result of the show relying too much on "Star Wars" humor at the time. Still, Fox forced them to parody the other two movies, and while the episodes are pretty good, doing the other two movies ended up ruining the joke, which even the show admitted in "It's A Trap!" via its opening crawl.
 * 39) * Similar with the case of Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", to be fair, one of the main reasons what made the original 6 seasons of Family Guy beloved by fans was the fact that back when the show was at hampered by network censorship restrictions it not only controlled its amount of adult and gross-out content, yet it encouraged the writers of Family Guy at the time to be more creative with their comedic gags and story executions. Since the time Family Guy is released from the network censorship restrictions it previously had in the first six seasons as of Season 7 due to its successful ratings, this resulted to the show losing its creativity in favor of overuse of gross-out and raunchy humor without any network censorship interference whatsoever.
 * 40) The jokes, gags, and episodes often steal elements from American Dad and The Simpsons.
 * 41) Annoying and overly hammy voice acting for some of the characters, especially Lois Griffin.
 * 42) Most of the cutaways and scenes portray nothing but being filler (example: the Conway Twitty cutaways). This also really harms the episodes in themselves, since if you take out the cutaways, the episodes don't even add up to 11 minutes.
 * 43) More recently, the show has been continuously making autism jokes. The most notable occurrence was in Season 14 where there was an autism joke in five episodes; with the first four times being consecutive.
 * 44) Overuse of product placement, such as Skittles and Subway, along with celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian.
 * 45) Part of the non-musical score is just a bunch of licensed songs from the '80s or '90s.
 * 46) Overuse of the zoom-in effect to highlight something dramatic.
 * 47) The animation isn't as lively as it once was. Although the animation of the series wasn't all that amazing, to begin with, the early seasons at least had some effort put into the animation. This is because the series switched to Toon Boom Harmony (the same animation software used to create animated shows like Stitch & Ai and movies like My Little Pony: The Movie in 2017) in Season 8.
 * 48) Seth MacFarlane wanted this series to end, but Fox forced him to keep it going. On that note, he still can veto scripts, allowing the series' downfall, likely due to his apathy toward the series (MacFarlane was frustrated that Fox aired three episodes behind his back during the 2007-08 Writers' Guild strike, likely leading to said apathy).
 * 49) * Speaking of which, Fox cares so little about the show's declining quality, that they've never bothered to cancel it again after already canceling it twice.
 * 50) The show often puts up a middle finger to Bob's Burgers, even joking it was animated in a moving car. It's clear that this is out of jealousy because Bob's Burgers actually has a few Emmys, something Family Guy claims to not have (we say "claims to" because they actually do have some for voice acting).
 * 51) The DVDs have various deleted scenes, some of which were cut from the episode for being unfunny. Still, in the case of "Brian's a Bad Father," they cut a scene of Brian talking to his son Dylan in favor of unfunny cutaways, including one where Peter wants to "cut" himself.
 * 52) The conflict in most episodes is extremely forced. For example, in one episode when Peter accidentally shoots Cleveland Jr., Cleveland accuses him of racism, completely out of nowhere.
 * 53) Most of the songs are crude and offensive, such as The Canadian Nudie Bars and "The Dating Game" songs.
 * 54) * And some can have absolutely no purpose, or just be downright irritating with "Surfing Bird" by The Trashmen being the biggest offender of this.
 * 55) Seth MacFarlane also broke a lot of promises, like originally vowing never to make 9/11 references; that vow was broken in episodes like "Back to the Pilot."
 * 56) The episode "Run Chris Run," used two videos of "Double Dribble" and "Tecmo Bowl" without the permission of the original owners, and Fox took down the originals in an attempt to cover their tracks. They were eventually re-uploaded, but the damage was already done.
 * 57) In 2020, the protests of George Floyd pressured Mike Henry to step down from voicing Cleveland, which comes off as hypocritical because the show's writers consistently insert racist jokes, and the recasting heavily panders to SJWs. The Simpsons, however, did the job worse by letting non-white characters no longer be voiced by white actors.
 * 58) It contains Animal Abuse parts, like where Brain gets killed by getting shot by Joe, getting stab in a pig by Peter, and Peter killing and tearing a beached whale with a Forklift and killing a cat while trying to shave it. There was even one episode even depicted Brian getting run over by a car.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Some characterizations are still done right:
 * 2) * Brian and Stewie have an awesome, believable friendship, and they are usually the main highlight of episodes involving the two.
 * 3) * Consuela is still a very funny character and Mike Henry does an excellent job doing the voice of her.
 * 4) * Mayor Adam West was still a funny character, although his voice actor of the same name sadly passed away in 2017.
 * 5) * Natalia from the episode "Nanny Goats" is actually an interesting new character.
 * 6) * Tiny Tom Cruise is also a pretty memorable character.
 * 7) There are still some good story ideas, concepts, and episodes such as:
 * 8) * "Road To" miniseries
 * 9) * "Into Fat Air"
 * 10) * "And Then There Were Fewer" (the best episode of Season 9)
 * 11) * "Christmas is Coming"
 * 12) * "Back to the Pilot" (despite mocking the 9/11 attacks)
 * 13) * "I Dream of Jesus"
 * 14) * "420"
 * 15) * "The Big Bang Theory" (not to be confused with the show of the same name)
 * 16) * "Yug Ylimaf"
 * 17) * "Three Directors"
 * 18) * "The Griffin Winter Games"
 * 19) * "Big Trouble in Little Quahog"
 * 20) * "Passenger Fatty-Seven"
 * 21) * "Island Adventure"
 * 22) * "Candy Quahog Marshmallow"
 * 23) * "The Man with Two Brians"
 * 24) * "Peternormal Activity"
 * 25) * "A Lot Going on Upstairs"
 * 26) * "Killer Queen"
 * 27) * "Dog Bites Bear"
 * 28) * "Spies Reminiscent of Us"
 * 29) * "Follow the Money"
 * 30) * "Bigfat"
 * 31) * "Underage Peter"
 * 32) * "Chap Stewie"
 * 33) * "Stewie's First Word"
 * 34) * "V is for Mystery"
 * 35) * "Brian & Stewie"
 * 36) * The episode, "Hot Shots", is a decent satire of anti-vax parents.
 * 37) * The Star Wars parody episodes are pretty funny and make for good parodies.
 * 38) The newer episodes can sometimes have their moments, such as Cleveland's bathtub gag or Quagmire's gags.
 * 39) * In fact, there's a pretty funny running gag in "The Blind Side", where Peter repeatedly falls down new stairs that Lois bought while swearing outrageously.
 * 40) The episode "Baby Stewie" closed off the episode with a Family Guy short starring Cleveland in the veins of the shorts of Pixar, which is actually okay.
 * 41) The musical score is still decent most of the time (when it doesn't license random 80's & 90's songs). The theme song, for example, is still pretty catchy.
 * 42) * Some song numbers are also pretty catchy, such as "A Bag of Weed", "Mr. Booze" (though it wasn't written for the show and took three minutes of the episode, it's still a great song sung by the cast), and "Candy Quahog Marshmallow."
 * 43) Many of the cast and crew still haven't changed.
 * 44) Despite the voice acting being annoying for some characters like Lois, it's still decent on everyone else, especially on Peter, Stewie, Brian, and Quagmire, which is impressive since they are all voiced by Seth MacFarlane.
 * 45) * Cleveland's new voice actor, Arif Zahir, does a really good job at sounding identical to Mike Henry, even before he got his role on the show. His impression can be heard when he was doing gameplays on YouTube.
 * 46) The action scenes are still good, such as the fights between Peter and Ernie, the Giant Chicken.
 * 47) As mentioned before, Stewie started to get better in the later seasons, and he remains the most likable character in the Griffin family. Also, around Season 14, the Griffin family (namely Peter, Stewie, and Chris) finally reconcile with Meg, so there have been far less "Meg Torture" gags, and Brian and Quagmire's rivalry with each other finally came to a halt around seasons 17 to 18.
 * 48) Much like The Simpsons, it at least pays tribute to dead members of the cast and crew like Doug Lackey and Adam West.
 * 49) While the animation did get stiffer, the backgrounds are actually better-looking than they were in the early episodes.
 * 50) Some of the cutaways are funny and/or touching, such as the Calvin and Hobbes cutaway in "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", which not only translates the comics' artstyle to the show's artstyle quite well, but even has a decent voice for Calvin as well.

Reception
This era was negatively received by critics and fans. It was ranked #1 on TheMysteriousMrEnter's Top 10 Worst Cartoons of the 2010s video. He even cited this as the reason he wouldn't even consider doing an Admirable Animation on the show. PhantomStrider also ranked this era as #1 on his Top 10 Worst Modern Cartoons video.