From the Beet Farm: Family Guy Meets The Simpsons (TV Review)

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EDITOR'S NOTE: BRL loyalists will remember at one time, this blog also occasionally covered TV and movies. Well lucky for you our TV/Movie/Super-Hero columnist, Juice, is back. He sent me this a couple weeks ago, when it was more relevant, but hell, I was busy. All this is written by him, with quick edits by myself. Enjoy.

 Family Guy Meets The Simpsons

 BY: Juice

When I was in 8^th grade I was talking to my friends about The Simpsons and Family Guy. We thought of the ideas of what would happen if the characters would be in an episode together.  I ended it saying that they will never be in an episode together. Well 8 years later Fox put them together anyway. 

“Simpson Guy” – what better way to title an episode people have been waiting years to see. When doing any cross over I believe the goal is to have both sides equally shown and not to have one side top the other. In “Simpson Guy” I fully enjoyed both of the Griffin and Simpson families. I’ve been watching The Simpsons all my life and Family Guy since I was a kid, so I can tell how their shows and comedy are different. This episode captured the style of both the shows very well; I even tweeted during the episode saying that it feels like I’m watching both my favorite shows in the same half hour (forgetting it was an hour long episode). An hour wasn’t long enough; there was some stuff in the episode that had build up but got wrapped up very quickly. One of the sub plots was Brian losing the Simpson’s family dog Santa’s Little Helper. Here’s what happened: Brian lost the dog, had to lie to the family about where the dog was and in the end the dog came back on his own. It’s a shame that this sub plot was so short because there was a chance for Brian to walk around Springfield interacting with some famous characters from the town. 

Another sub plot that seemed to be very short was the Meg and Lisa storyline. Now the scenes with theses two are very The Simpsons style. Family Guy gets a lot of its comedy from making fun, and not caring about people’s feelings. Meg is 90% of all of that. The Simpsons has a lot of heart in their episodes and a lot of moments where a character will eventually do the right thing. The Meg/Lisa moments showed Lisa having interest in Meg and making her believe that she’s not worthless, but Lisa regrets helping her when she finds out that Meg is better at the saxophone than her. Lisa gets jealous, but in the end she comes to her unselfish ways and passes the saxophone over to Meg. But it has a very Family Guy ending having Peter throw away the saxophone not caring about Meg in the least. 

No sub plot with the wives, but they did have a good one with Bart and Stewie. Stewie finds Bart as a type of mentor and wishes to style his life as Bart’s. But Stewie’s life choices scares Bart away and ruins the friendship. Not much of a story line, but it did carry some good comedy. Now the big one, the only one that really matters – Homer and Peter’s story line. The two work together to find Peter’s stolen car, and the car was returned based on no actions taken by Peter or Homer. The car being return so quickly felt rushed, like maybe there was a bigger story on how they got the car back, but it was cut due to time. Then again that is how Family Guy episodes go sometimes. They both shared a hilarious car wash scene and a big over the top fight scene.

Threw out the episode there are breaking fourth wall jokes. I have never seen so many breaking fourth wall jokes in anything. There is a court room scene where they pointed out all the character simulators from both shows. And they even get Fred Flintstone to be the judge, who was the very first carton fat lazy husband, that is freaking funny!

Now let me get into the fight of this episode. Stan Lee said that whenever two super heroes fight, they have to end it in a draw, that way you don’t show one as better than the other. In this episode they took the Peter fighting the big yellow chicken route. These two getting into a fight was never a surprise, there have been video games out there having theses two fight so it was great to see one in an episode. And going back to the super hero talk, when ever two super heroes meet they always get into fights. In Marvel’s The Avengers Thor fought all the heroes while Iron Man and Captain America had arguments. Not saying Peter and Homer are super heroes but I’m not surprised that they fought.

Now remember when I said I never seen so many breaking the fourth wall jokes? Well I believe that the real fight between Peter and Homer, was actually between Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane. It’s funny if you watch the court room scene you can see both of them sitting next to each other in the audience. If you think about it, Homer and Peter have been fighting each other since the beginning. Fighting over ratings, reviews, best time spots on the Fox channel, and the best cartoon show on Fox. Over the years the two have beaten King of the Hill, Futurama, The Cleveland Show, and still seemed to be the best, so the fight could be which show one is the best. The best moment in the fight was when Homer started throwing Golden Globes at Peter, and Peter asked him to stop because he doesn’t have any. 

It seems that Peter is the winner of the fight, due to them basing this fight off the fights between Peter and the chicken (where Peter walks away victorious believing the chicken to be dead but the chicken opens his eyes to show that he’ll be back for more at another time). The show ends the two giving a hand shake saying that both of them respect each other, which is another fourth wall moment, and another reason why I think that this was Matt Groening and Seth MacFarlane.

Over all this was a great time, felt like you were watching both a Family Guy and Simpsons episode and that’s all I ever asked for!