Family Guy Simpsons crossover episode highlights gulf between the cartoons - review
Family Guy own writers have drawn attention to how The Simpsons is superior
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Your support makes all the difference.A week after the BBC Trust crushed all hopes of a reprieve for BBC Three, one of the channel’s most celebrated shows arrived in its new BBC Two home with a suitably momentous episode.
‘The Simpsons Guy’ is Family Guy’s 45-minute crossover episode with The Simpsons, a key source of inspiration for the adult animated sitcom; and some would say that’s putting it mildly.
Those people might even include Family Guy’s own writing team, who have so accurately depicted all the ways in which The Simpsons is superior to their own work, you wonder where they found the motivation to get up the next morning and write the rest of the 13th season.
The Griffins turned up in Springfield after dad Peter’s jokes were deemed sexist in their Rhode Island home (something Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane should know all about). The Simpsons initially welcomed their new “albino friends” but grew progressively disenchanted.
These guys are just cruder (Stewie’s rape joke disgusts even Bart), more violent (Homer and Peter’s fight makes ‘Itchy and Scratchy’ look mellow) and more derivative.
Of course MacFarlane has a loyal following built, arguably, on precisely these qualities, but with the recent box office flop of his movie Ted 2, there’s a danger that BBC Two has cottoned on just as everyone else is losing interest.
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