Was South Park Right About Family Guy Jokes?

don't you ever ever compare me to Family Guy all the way back in 2006 an argument began between South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and the Family Guy writing staff an argument that would divide fans along battle lines to determine once and for all what qualifies as good comedy writing is the goal just to get a laugh or to find an appropriate laugh for the story you're telling and what even defines good storytelling is it about pacing character development and thematic continuity or just that it keeps the audience engaged and entertained in South

Park's double episode Cartoon Wars Trey and Matt attack Family Guy's writing style insisting that the jokes are interchangeable and have nothing to do with the plot and that the jokes themselves are just convoluted combinations of words that could easily be constructed by malady selecting random balls with words on them from a ball pit the episodes were well received by audiences but adored by other animated comedy teams after the first episode aired they received a thank you call from The Simpsons writers who even went on to send them flowers as Parker claims they hate Family Guy

more than we do even though they won't say it and King of the Hill writers call them to tell them they're doing God's work by ripping on Family Guy so there's something about Family Guy's writing style that frustrates other animated comedy writers clearly viewing it as the entertainment equivalent of fast food there was this very uh animation solidarity moment where everyone did come together over hatred for Family Guy but is it just jealousy are they merely missing how skillful it is to actually write these gags or are they seeing something that fans don't let's find

out this is South Park vs Family Guy a completely unnecessary examination now as much as we all have our personal preferences let's not pretend that both of these shows are not at least on some level funny both have been running for over 20 years for a reason they have episodes with excellent premises iconic characters and laugh out loud moments they even have a lot in common but the writing teams philosophies skills and styles are very very different let's start with the basics what exactly is Family Guy's style of Comedy writing unlike most other animated series

Family Guy merges linear storytelling with surrealistic comedy asides and cutaway gags this means that Family Guy does tell a story just like The Simpsons American Dad and South Park but in the middle of its story it may unexpectedly drift aside to have fun showing what other characters are doing even though it's irrelevant to the plot for example here the story starts with the Griffins competing in a boat race against Lois's father Carter but then the starting gun is allegedly shot by recently paroled presidential assassin John Hinckley and Jody Foster randomly enters the gag to complement

his shooting skills maybe I was wrong about you maybe I was wrong about all men or here the story involves Chris being the front man for a rebellious rock group and when he jumps into the crowd falls through the floor and unexpectedly discovers mayor Adam West playing poker with a group of dogs or they may set up a cutaway in which one of the lead characters introduces a random memory such as like the time I did blank I haven't felt this out of place since that week I lived with Superman you remember that time I

gave you apple juice and told you it was wine like that time I out fridayed Michael Moore or stating an unusual idea so they can then show it to the audience Saturday I'm giving Javier a bad damn a haircut and if Cookie Monster calls tell him I am not talking to him until he gets out of rehab like inviting a turtle to a cocktail party all of this makes family go fast paced and feels more like a variety show of random jokes not committed to a single theme or storyline like any form of humor the

joke derives from defying the audience's expectations sometimes through matter humor meaning they break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience about the show they're watching no clip oh thought we had a clip nope okay uh sometimes with surrealist aside that we couldn't possibly see coming sometimes through musical numbers sometimes through extreme inappropriate behavior like grown-ups acting like children or children acting like grown-ups sometimes through breaking away from the narrative for a long drawn out realistic moment like when Peter hurts his knee ah or dragging out a scene in which all the characters nod

to one another for a full minute in their Star Wars episode in these cases the joke stems from satirizing traditional storytelling which often leaves out these imperfect moments like stubbing your toe using the toilet or fumbling a social interaction which we all know happen in real life all the time and the joke is that it goes on for so long in a format that usually demands brevity whereas here they're defying your expectations by essentially wasting the viewers time but in a way that hopefully becomes increasingly funny the longer it persists as its breaking convention but

despite what Parker and stone claim Family Guy usually has at least one sometimes two story lines per episode with a beginning middle and end such as Peter gets a maid that Quagmire falls in love with Brian and Stewie joined the army Lois becomes a model and so on the chaotic variety show structure of Family Guy is a stylistic choice a Seth MacFarlane has proved that he can create fantastic animated series that follow a linear structure such as American Dad in essence Family Guy's style is Limitless there's never a reason they cannot create or insert a

joke into any story at any time to earn a laugh foreign [Music] but by contrast South Park's comedy writing is a mixture of social commentary shock value and absurdism told in a linear structure a typical episode of South Park is written with a clear theme in mind and the story and jokes never deviate from that theme for example if the episode is about getting older or psychics every scene ties into that theme moving the story forward while finding humor through the Absurd possibilities of the concept even in the Cartoon Wars Episode rather than outright telling

you what they want you to believe it gets expressed through the story and characters for instance Cartman wants to help Kyle get the Family Guy joke taken off the air as once one joke is taken down then every other group has a right to complain and the show will sink clearly reflecting their attitude to free speech and entertainment that either everything is okay or nothing is and they also make the town decide that the best way to show they don't support the joke is to physically stick their heads in the sand all of this ties

neatly into the theme of free speech and raises the question what makes a joke acceptable or unacceptable while simultaneously Parker and stone are ironically declaring Family Guy's jokes as unworthy as they don't meet their personal standards so it's tackling its theme from multiple perspectives the benefit of writing each episode with a clear theme is that it's very easy to remember which episode each joke is from as your mind can catalog Us in context of the surrounding story whereas with Family Guy most cutaways could be swapped with the cutaways from another episode and it would make

no difference whatsoever Family Guy is harder to mentally catalog as the actual storyline is often the least compelling part of the episode as they have so many hilarious unexpected or memorable side pieces that your mind can't really remember what the point of any of it was in Parker and Stone's rulebook good comedic storytelling demands that your jokes are compatible with the story at hand and not just random gags whenever we're bringing in new writers we always know the gaggy Riders right which are the ones that no matter what you're talking about and how deep of

an issue or whatever character Arc or whatever it is they're just thrown out a gag and it's just like yeah and then he says this and it's like that has nothing to do with what we're talking about that has nothing to do with that character you're just throwing out a gag randomly this means the key fundamental difference in their comedy stylings is that Family Guy is Limitless it can and will randomly insert anything it thinks is funny to keep the audience entertained and along for the ride whereas South Park views that as cheap and easy

that the real craft of writing is limiting yourself and ensuring that the jokes fit with the character arcs and theme [Music] but what does Seth MacFarlane say about cutaways it's the cutaways specifically that they they really I guess don't think are they don't see that as a legitimate form of comedy and it's it's funny those are the hardest things to write you know you're coming up with a premise that has to be set up and pay off in a short amount of time you're just you're just starting from scratch not unlike Parker and stone McFarland

believes his method of writing is the hardest as it requires coming up with a premise and payoff independent of the story in order to earn the laugh but is that true let's take this cutaway gag as an example Lois is angry that Peter encouraged Joe to have an affair and then randomly Stewie interjects and we've all made mistakes and we cut to Stewie walking through a door that says not an exit and unexpectedly a gorilla pops out and attacks him so is McFarland's claim here that this premise on its own is hard to come up

with and pay off in such a short time if that's the case it's a simple enough concept we never get to know what's behind a not an exit door as we don't get to use it so why don't they specify what it is rather than what it isn't so they illustrate that by putting something random and dangerous behind the doorway ha ha auris has claimed that it's funnier to cut away than just being restricted to that one scene in that one story because if that's the case then Parker and Stone's criticism is that the joke

is completely irrelevant and therefore acts as nothing but a distraction from your narrative's shortcomings for instance if you were reading George Orwell's 1984 and every now and then when he runs out of good material he just spliced in random highlight segments from Animal Farm would that detract from the story or be considered even better writing because now it's all good material or is comedy writing for TV to be considered the same as stand-up comedy where anything goes that some comedians tie all their jokes together and others just do one-liners does One require more skill than

the other or is the only metric that matters how many laughs you actually get South Park's claim is that Family Guy writers could not or just did not write a connecting scene between Lois and Peter's conversation about cheating to Stewie walking through a not an exit door and getting attacked by a gorilla surely that would be much more difficult if not impossible so by skipping those story beats they've essentially cheated that the jolt of shock and Limitless nature makes the joke writing easy and the joke itself meaningless as the only necessary connection to the Cutaway

was the word mistake this is what Parker and stone mean when they say the jokes are interchangeable that you could randomly edit them into other Family Guy episodes without feeling out of place [Music] let's imagine South Park did the same thing in the episode where Stan makes friends with a Mormon family if he returned home and told his family about them like in the normal script and then instead of engaging in the story Randy first responded with well we all make mistakes and then we just cut to that funny scene from another episode where Randy

tries to act sober when he's pulled over by the cops what seems to be the officer problem would that scene be just as funny in any context or does it work best within the confines of that story about Randy drinking too much it's certainly more memorable when it's in the context of a complete story but as an independent gag admittedly it is still pretty funny in either format but just how often to Family Guy do this having researched 20 random episodes in the first 10 seasons including TV segments that essentially act as cutaways and not

including random asides they typically averaged 7 to 12 cutaway sketches per episode and these cutaways can last anywhere between 5 seconds and 5 minutes as they can have a quick smash cut gag or do an extensive sequence like Peter fighting the chicken for a full five minutes so it's either a drive-by gag and it's gone or a lengthy when will this ever end type of gag that becomes legendary just because of how long it's taking but think about it in a 21-minute episode we are dedicating large portions of it to irrelevant gags and let's be

honest some cutaways seem to be inserted just to waste the audience's time like my personal pet peeve the Conway Twitty cutaways in which they insert a segment of the country singer performing for what feels like an eternity they do this in more than five episodes and I've yet to meet a single human being that actually finds it funny in the most indefensible segment they play a full song of his for 2 minutes and 45 seconds and the audience is just meant to endure this and somehow appreciate it as comedic genius quick cutaway gag that doesn't

land is no big deal as it's an immediate hit or miss and we move on but when this joke doesn't land it keeps not Landing for almost 3-4 minutes surely this is a prime example of what Parker and stone mean when they say the writers need to work harder what makes me at this point about family guys I think it could be an amazing show I think they're really you can tell they're smart people working on it I don't think they work hard enough yeah they need to work harder as the audience tuned in to

watch Family Guy not just Conway Twitty performing for over 12 percent of the episode now from what I can tell my angry reaction is the joke that you don't want it but you're being forced to watch it in which case fine but then McFarlane can't justify this with his earlier claim that these are actually harder jokes to write as they require a complete setup and payoff of Their Own which leads to the next question are the Cutaway sketches actually even funny or is it just so random and unexpected that it tricks your brain into thinking

it is like this pointless cutaway in which Peter pitches Chris or Pepsi you won't be able to see him past your Pepsi and and then and then who's dead huh you you you're dead stop Crystal Pepsi yeah that's uh funny right because it's it's inappropriate to say that at a pitch meeting but why interrupt the episode for this why Crystal Pepsi why any of us let's use this cutaway as an example the setup is that Brian being hit must hurt worse than receiving a birthday telegram from zenedine zidane the pop culture reference is that zidane

famously headbutted a fellow footballer in the world cup and the joke is imagining he did that as a birthday telegram but what how would okay but in that moment your brain connects the tiny bit of information you know about him and the surprise of it happening at all and then we're just on to the next scene like it didn't even happen South Park famously portrayed the Family Guy writing staff as a group of manatees randomly selecting a series of idea balls each ball contains a verb noun or pop culture reference and combine to make a

cutaway gag so for this cutaway the balls would be hurt old lady birthday gift and Zinedine Zidane none of these words or ideas intrinsically belong in a sentence together which is why the joke is funny or for this cutaway farts Michael Moore competition and music but not all cutaways are irrelevant to the story sometimes they're thematically tied together or at least relevant to the new setting the characters inhabit and despite being random it doesn't mean that these cutaway gags are never funny as some of these segments Are undeniably Family Guy at its best but as

much as we can focus on the differences between Family Guy and South Park it cannot be denied that there are similarities I am nothing both shows involve toilless humor social commentary musical numbers and even some of the same gags just told differently or for different periods of time in 2004 South Park created a joke that the detective doesn't arrest a serial killer with chopped off hands on his wall as they're looking for left hands and these appear to be right hands as they're turned over with the thumb facing the other way so rather than arresting

the guy with chopped off hands on his wall he leaves as he's not the guy but he is suspicious so for a full minute there's a montage of him researching in a lab and even getting distracted along the way until he realizes what the audience already knew all along this is actually quite a Family Guy style joke where they drag out the gag for as long as possible but the context of the story raises the stakes so it's even funnier as the detective is in a position of authority and Cartman's life depends on him so

the joke lands harder because it's not just wasting our time it's wasting Cartman's precious time compare this to a similar joke Family Guy made in 2000 Peter is hoping to find one of four remaining tickets to the brewery tour now that one is gone he has to figure out how many are left so they do a quick 10 second Montage of him as a lab performing random tasks and then when he returns from his research dish many he doesn't even have the number just holds up his hand with three fingers the joke is quicker and

defies our expectations at the end as Peter Steele doesn't know the number three and can only hold up his fingers making all his research pointless as he was initially counting on his fingers anyway but which joke is funnier South Parks is dragged out for longer but is part of the story and has higher Stakes or Family Guy's quick 10 second gag with a punchline achieving all the same greatness with no major Stakes there is no right and wrong they're both just silly gags but it's about how much you value its relevance to the storyline but

similarities go beyond just individual gags let's compare how each show tells essentially the same story with virtually identical conclusions South Park's Bloody Mary and Family Guys friends of Peter G both episodes involve a character getting arrested for being drunk going to Alcoholics Anonymous and at the end concluding that moderation is key in South Park there's a total of 15 scenes the boys learn about the concept of discipline in their karate class then Randy arrives drunk to drive the boys home displaying he has no discipline and gets arrested in school Randy brings shame to Stan by

talking to the class about his drunk driving in his AAA meeting Randy doesn't believe he's an alcoholic but is told he's perilous and has a disease therefore when Stein comes home Randy is on the couch hopelessly drinking playing the victim they then introduce a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary being discovered by a priest which Randy sees on the news Stan goes to the AAA meeting to say you messed with my dad by saying he has a disease he just needs discipline which as you can see ties back to scene 1. the story progresses as

a Vatican member comes to see the statue of Mary and calls it a miracle so needing a miracle of his own Randy now must see the statue and wants to drunk drive there Stan stops him and his maid Drive instead Randy sees a line of people wanting to be cured of serious diseases like cancer and elephantitis he skips the queue as he now equates his alcoholism with their issues the statue bleeds on his face so Randy believes he's cured by a miracle therefore he now acts deeply religious then when he has pizza with his AAA

group a TV reports that the Pope says it's actually not a miracle So Randy loses faith and starts drinking again as he believes he's powerless linking back to his first AAA meeting but Stan stops him outside and says if it wasn't a miracle then it proves that he did successfully quit drinking by himself this teaches him that moderation requires discipline again linking back to scene 1 at karate class and we're done so as you can see each scene leads directly into the next and always progresses the story forward the very first scene informs us of

the lesson of the episode and by having Randy believe anything he's told by authority figures it allows Parker and stone to provide real social commentary on the issue of drinking the jokes are all based on Randy being a drunken fool or playing the victim or commenting on aa's explicit ties to organized religion now let's see how Family Guy dealt with the exact same theme and lesson they did it in 17 scenes Peter and Brian go to the cinema and we get a funny aside about how Studio logo intros are hard to decipher from the movie

actually starting they decide to get drunk and there's commotion and they end up arrested by Joe they go to court and are sentenced to 30 days of AAA over breakfast Brian expresses that AAA is stupid a random cutaway gag of an old poet writing the rap lyrics to Kanye West's gold digger at their first AAA meeting Peter listens to other people's stories and then tells his own which is a cutaway of him drunk driving through a water slide back to the AAA meeting there's talk of a higher power which causes Brian to push back because

he's an atheist which earns another cutaway showing how everyone was peaceful before religion came along then Lois asks about how it went Brian and Peter complain about AA and think really what what everyone needs is a place to drink shamelessly so they bring booze to the next AAA meeting and everyone gets drunk Joe goes to the AAA meeting due to a noise complaint which ties Joe back in from the opening scene they quickly convert the room to looking like a sermon for AAA Peter sings the upbeat song Mr Boos for several minutes after that everyone

is drunk outside and Peter decides to drive home and crashes his car death comes and shows him where his life is headed if he keeps drinking starting with him lining up his family to burn with a cigar then sleeping with his unattractive boss Angela then showing what it would be like if Peter never drank it all instead he's lining up his family to hug them instead of burning them but he no longer has Quagmire and Joe as friends so he hates both outcomes and learns to drink in moderation it ends with a cutaway gag of

two seagulls at the dump drinking his thrown away beers there are several differences between both storytelling Styles even though they both ultimately conclude the same message firstly South Park has no cutaways or asides so we can cut out five of Family Guy segments right off the bat meaning that time is dedicated to the actual Story the next is that South Park introduces its core message from the very opening scene with the boys at karate class whereas Family Guy has no message until it's shoehorn did at the end when Peter like Ebenezer Scrooge is shown what

his life could be like if he doesn't stop drinking so much they also don't give Brian any Revelation or conclusion at all even though he was attending aa2 thirdly tone wise Family Guy takes its theme much less seriously instead it has a three and a half minute song Mr Booze that's very upbeat and playful for a song about quitting drinking whereas South Park delves into the psychology of aa's messaging and how it could be teaching its members a form of learned helplessness but what this exercise does expose is that Parker and Stone's claim that Family

Guy jokes are never relevant to the story is false as whether it's a song or a cutaway most of the episode is spent on the same theme really Family Guy is spinning two plates at the same time jokes that work within their story and then when they don't have something good enough divert to jokes outside their story however it's hard not to see Parker and Stone's point that when some episodes have 12 cutaway gags that it meaningfully detracts from the story [Music] but does that therefore make a bad storytelling well part of great writing is

ensuring that everything works in tandem when you read a great story you don't necessarily realize it right away but on closer inspection usually the theme was subtly present on each page so that the story makes sense to you on an emotional level without needing to be spelled out to you yet on an intellectual level you feel something about the characters and the theme and the story then may present to you something that either confirms that message or contrasts it to make you feel like the outcome was even more of an injustice in great comedy writing

typically it's that the premise alone is funny enough to create numerous comedic opportunities and the characters are also unique that you can select the right ones for each story to maximize its potential so let's look at storytelling done right when there's more than one storyline in TV writing these are typically an a story and a b story in South Parks you're getting old the theme of the episode is about time changing your taste we start with Stan turning 10 years old and receiving a tween wave album his mother doesn't want him listening to that shitty

music whereas Randy used to want to be a rock star so pretends to understand its merits the story then diverges with Randy trying to act younger than he is by liking modern music while Stan can't help that he's suddenly hating all the stuff that he used to love but Randy's refusal to let go of his dream highlights that actually he and Sharon have lost interest in one another over time and Grown Apart and now Stan who has already been losing friends has to watch his family break apart as they are changing too all triggered from

that album he got as a gift in the opening scene Stan as the a story Randy is the B story they both meet at the beginning separate and then merge at the end or in the case of miss teacher bangs a boy the a story is that Ike begins a romantic relationship with his teacher and the bee story is that Cartman becomes the hall monitor at school and when Kyle catches Ike and lets it slip to Cartman that they've been making out in the hallways the stories merge and now Cartman makes it his mission to

stop them not because what she's doing is morally wrong but because it's against the school rules that he's enforcing and the school rules and people's differing attitudes to them are the theme of both storylines so it's all neatly tied together nice this isn't unique to South Park Family Guy can do this too in season threes Brian wallows and Peter swallows the a story is that Brian falls into depression from loneliness and winds up caring for a cranky elderly woman who he falls in love with while the B story involves Peter growing a beard that attracts

swallows to use as a nest he can't get rid of them at first but then falls in love with them and won't let them leave and then thematically the two stories mirror one another at the end as Brian has to learn to let go of pearl as she passes away from old age and Peter has to learn to let go and release the birds back into the wild which is beautiful thematic continuity but is that really how most Family Guy episodes are written for the first three seasons often yes although most episodes only have one

story per episode but after that rarely for example in season 4 Lois becomes a model while Brian gets worms and has to work for Stewie there is no connection between these two story lines they start separate and separate and that's it or in season 5 Brian and Stewie joined the army while Chris joins a rock band these stories have nothing linking them together no theme no plot no nothing [Music] but what is interesting is how Family Guy's writing has evolved over the last 15 years I researched three episodes in season 20 and to my surprise

there were very few cutaway jokes at all I counted just two four and three so they've cut the number of cutaway jokes in half so does this mean that the storytelling is better emotionally perhaps but entertainment wise not really there is more time dedicated to the emotional experience of each character but if anything the show feels flatter than before the characters are often just sitting around talking to one another instead of being more active or doing something funny and although every episode has an A and B story none of them are connected whatsoever this could

just be the result of being on air for over 20 years but depending on your personal preference you could say that this is evidence that Parker and stone were wrong that the show is much funnier with random cutaway gags or you could claim it's evidence that they were totally right that once you strip away the shiny glitter of random cutaways that the writers have little to offer comedically so in conclusion were Trey Parker and Matt Stone's claims that Family Guy is poorly written accurate well on the front of the Cutaway jokes being interchangeable the answer

is yes they usually are and are the Cutaway jokes just random combinations of words that could be created by Manatee selecting balls sometimes yes but that doesn't mean that the jokes themselves are never funny and our Family Guy's jokes never relevant to the story and no they often are they're just blended with irrelevant Jokes which makes the story itself less memorable and finally does Family Guy tell a story with her beginning middle and end yes but sometimes that story feels secondary to the gags and therefore the character development feels unearned ironically in South Park's Cartoon

Wars they depicted Family Guy as the show that would get into trouble for showing the prophet Muhammad but in 2010 it was actually Parker and stone who found themselves in trouble over the exact same issue in their 200th episode and Seth MacFarlane got to commentate on the sidelines revealing his personal feelings and whether or not jokes can go too far there's no way to know if it were me and and and I was in the situation it was like well do I is again is this is this worth getting shot is it the funniest joke

anyone's ever written okay which again speaks to the difference in both writing philosophies Trey Parker and Matt Stone are more principles there's either everything is okay or nothing is okay but that there are rules to storytelling that need to be obeyed to ensure you're telling a worthwhile story this is a more puritanical view that storytelling has a higher purpose and responsibility where is Seth MacFarlane is more pragmatic whatever works to keep the audience entertained is fair game and if some jokes are going to cause real world trouble then who cares cut them after all they're

just jokes but perhaps he only feels that way as his jokes are more interchangeable and less intentioned so after all of this what do you think is it really worse comedy writing to include funny jokes that aren't relevant to the story or is it better comedy writing to complete a linear story with thematic continuity but fewer funny jokes the easy answer that most people will give is both but the real question is what's more important and ultimately in the battle between South Park and family guy who do you think is better [Music] if you enjoy

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