On February 8, 2015, Family Guy released an episode titled “Quagmire’s Mom”. In the episode, recurring sex addict character Glen Quagmire is arrested for having sex with a high school girl. After claiming that his mother is the reason he grew up a sexual deviant, Quagmire is still sentenced to twenty years in prison. However, his mother enters the episode and finds a way to get her son cleared of her charges. While I am a huge Family Guy fan, I personally thought this episode was mediocre. However, I apparently loved this episode compared to Parents TV Council.
The Parent Television Council is probably more active in attacking Family Guy than any other major organization. Family Guy has made their annual list of “Worst Primetime Shows to Watch as a Family” three times and over forty episodes have been chosen for the Parent Television Council’s “Worst TV Show of the Week.” They have even launched campaigns for the Fox network to cancel Family Guy.
I know a lot of people hate Family Guy for a number of reasons, including the cut jokes, the lack of consistency, and of course the offensive humor. Most viewers distance themselves from certain popular shows. I hate The Bachelor because I don’t believe for one second that it’s reality and I hate Downton Abbey because I find it slow, pretentious and painfully boring. However, if those shows are popular, who am I to say they should be off the air? I just won’t look at them. In fact, if I had the option to cancel those shows myself, I wouldn’t do it because other people enjoy them and they don’t force it on me. Similarly, no one is forcing members of the TV Parents Council to watch Family Guy. I doubt they like anything about it. This means that they watch this show by their own choice, not because there is anything in the show that appeals to them, but just so they can complain later.
Humor is subjective and different people have different senses of humor. For example, I did not find the movie “Elf” in the slightest despite its universal praise. But I’m not going to criticize other people for laughing at it or starting a campaign against the movie because it didn’t fit my sense of humor. The Parents Television Council can’t seem to understand this. They think that if you find something funny that they don’t, you are at fault and inferior to the sophistication of these elite intellectuals. In one of his recent articles complaining about the episode “Our Idiot Brian”, Christopher Gildemiester stated that “it was a typical Family Guy episode, except for the long middle part of the episode making fun of stupid people, which no doubt insulted a lot of people.” of the most important characters of Family Guy fans.” These people constantly complain that Family Guy negatively generalizes certain types of people, but they just call Family Guy fans “stupid people.”
More than anything else, the Parent Television Council complains about Family Guy for indecency, such as making fun of certain types of people or groups, violent or sexually explicit content, or offensive jokes on sensitive topics. That would be like going to “Dora the Explorer” and complaining that she was too childish and silly. Members of the TV Parents Council are obviously not the target audience. Neither are people who tend to take offense at shocking humor. This is the kind of show that Family Guy is and always was. It’s obviously not for everyone, but let people who like the show watch it. The people on the TV Parents Council can watch whatever they want to watch.
Now, I would understand if they made these kinds of complaints about a family show. For example, in a SpongeBob episode called “Are you happy now?” there is a joke where Squidward is depressed and holds up a noose saying “maybe this will help”, implying that he will hang himself, only to pull out something else instead. This is clearly a suicide prank and of course it got a lot of backlash. Watching SpongeBob is a children’s show and this kind of joke is out of place on a show that is expected to be a family show. In this case, the program is to blame for the content the children were exposed to. But Family Guy was always an adult cartoon. Sure, it’s gotten bolder over the years, but it wasn’t for kids to begin with. The Parent Television Council often complains that children are exposed to Family Guy. I’m not a father, so I can’t judge if a father allows his children to watch Family Guy or not. But Family Guy is clearly not a kids’ show and whatever kids are exposed to is up to the parents. And I know the Parent Television Council complains about Family Guy’s time slot, how it airs too early when the kids are still watching TV, but that’s not the show’s fault either. That’s the network’s fault and that problem should be dealt with them, not the program itself.
They also like to complain about certain messages that, according to them, the programs broadcast. They claim that Family Guy belittles the seriousness of serious issues like rape, racism, and abuse. However, you must remember that Family Guy is comedy. Not only that, but it’s completely absurd with no attempt at realism or logic. I’m not going to learn that it’s okay to treat a family member like dirt because they do that on Family Guy. They’re not actively telling us that abuse is okay (except maybe with one or two rare exceptions like “Seahorse Seashell Party”). I can laugh at racist or suicide jokes while still understanding the seriousness of the issues. I know some people can’t and that’s just a difference in sense of humor. I can even laugh at jokes that make fun of me. I have Asperger’s Syndrome and have never been offended one bit by Family Guy’s numerous autism jokes. If others are offended by this black humor, then they can watch more politically correct shows. The TV Parents Council needs to understand that just because a show offends them doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist.
However, the turning point in writing this was the article on the aforementioned episode, Quagmire’s Mom. The Parent Television Council complained that the episode made jokes about statutory rape. Now this was just baffling to me. Family Guy isn’t new to pulling these kinds of jokes. They’ve made far more offensive jokes than this, like almost every episode featuring Herbert’s character, an old man who constantly tries to get sexual pleasure from young children. Even this episode’s main character, Quagmire, has done much worse. Many other episodes have involved him committing numerous forcible rapes and even keeping women locked up in his home to satisfy his own sexual desires. In fact, one of my complaints about this episode is that when Quagmire finally gets significant consequences for his actions, it’s for something that, to be honest, wasn’t even his fault. He had consensual sex with a girl who lied to him that she was an adult and Quagmire was shocked when he revealed that he was a minor after they had already had sex. He would say that the real-life injustice that this episode jokes about is that people can go to jail for twenty years for having sex with someone they thought was legal. But since this episode involved anything that included the word “rape,” the Parent Television Council is freaking out. This episode isn’t even that insensitive on the subject compared to other episodes. In fact, it actually takes the issue quite seriously for an episode of Family Guy.
The Parent Television Council, to me, represents the worst of modern censorship. If people want to publicly rant about how much they hate Family Guy, that’s their free speech. However, the Parents Television Council is actively trying to remove the show because they don’t like it. People should be able to enjoy the entertainment they prefer, but no one can tell you what you like. You can hate Family Guy all you want, but the best way to deal with it is to avoid it. Let’s hope the Parents Television Council understands that one day.