I think American Dad's still on, just not on Fox. I didn't even care to watch it until my brother pretty much forced me to watch the hot tub episode, much like Cee Lo Green, the voice of the hot tub, forced a girl into non-consensual sex. I didn't want to see it but my funnybone came anyway.

It's moving to TBS and I assume will start its regular season shortly.

Simpsons will never die.

Simpsons will do EVERYTHING.

Yeah, I'm with you.

There are a couple of OK jokes, (not great, but.... OK) but they're sprinkled in among the aggressively unfunny dreck.

Somebody wrote this episode. Time was actually spent on it. The mind boggles.

Funny thing is, I was literally paid to watch this. I'm a caregiver so I suggested watching this on demand while we ordered pizza. One of my clients suggested we turn it off, and I couldn't have agreed more. I think we made it to the courthouse scene, and watching the rest of this made me glad we switched it off.

Alright Motherfucker, you make a good point, but even you have to admit this episode was pretty rank compared to what both shows have done in the past.

Inverse rant, best tv of my youth:

Welcome back cotter
WKRP in Cincinnati
Taxi (at least some of the episodes)
Bleu Nuit (soft core porn broadcast in Quebec)

The Simpsons of the 90s is a credible candidate for the best TV show ever.

Is it still that good? Of course not, and I don't usually watch it these days, but it's still pretty good, and if the audience, the creators, and the network still find it worth doing, I say God bless em. Sunday Nights, when people are facing the work week, sometimes they like to take comfort in familiar things.

Family Guy is probably the most offensive show on Network TV, and I used to love it for that reason... until I, too, was offended. The episode where Peter murdered Quagmire's cat soured me on the show forever. It's not that I hate it now, it's more like I just lost the will to watch.

But I was able to put it aside for the crossover. I found it to be uneven. The Lisa/Meg Bart/Stewie Brian/Santa's Little Helper interactions were nice. The Homer/Peter Stuff worked when they were pals, but that long "chicken-fight" was an unsatisfactory climax.

"Welcome Back, Kotter" sucked ass.

But Meg says she hurts cats in *this* episode; shouldn't you be offended by it, too?

Also, fuck you, F Troop is awesome. That was my favorite show on Nick at Nite!

The shows that I listed are all shows that I actually watched as a kid, so I don't entirely hate any of them. I do believe that by any objective standard, any episode of Simpsons is better than any episode of F Troop, and that SCRIPTED TV, as opposed to "reality" bullshit, is way better than it used to be.

>>But Meg says she hurts cats in *this* episode; shouldn't you be offended by it, too?

If I was trying to organize a letter-writing campaign against Family Guy, or something, that question might makes sense. But this isn't that kind of "offended". There's no logic or morality to this. It was am emotional reaction that I didn't even fully appreciate at the time,

Peter and his friends are annoyed by Quagmire's dumb childlike affection for his cat, and so they decide to shave the cat as a prank, and the cat is stupidly killed. My reaction to this has more to do with Quagmire's affection for his cat, maybe the closest thing to a relatable human emotion as I've ever seen on Family Guy. Family Guy just doesn't have any humanity at all.

When the Simpsons and the Griffens meet, Lisa is horrified at the abuse and neglect Meg receives on a daily basis, and Bart is eventually horrified at Stewie's comic book villain persona. I think this says a lot about which show hasn't left human characters behind.

JHM you make a good point, but I think most mainstream TV watchers still consider The Simpsons and Family Guy as "Cartoons," therefore not "Sitcoms." So you also had All in the Family, The Jeffersons (in some ways better than the AitF,) and "Cartoons" like Wizards and Fantastic Planet (not to mention early Flintstones, which is still pretty great,) to name a few, not to mention Happy Days before Fonzie put on the waterskis. Yeah, Gilligan's Island played basketball with the Harlem Globetrotters (and robots) and still couldn't get off the island, and while it's funny now, I can only imagine the universal facepalm.

Frankly, I'd watch any of the shows you mentioned over 99% of sitcoms; I don't watch Big Bang Theory, How I met your Mother, 2 and a Half Men, I could go on and don't even care, but those are sort of the "good" ones compared to the shit that's on other stations like these ads I keep seeing for Mulaney, which somehow looks worse than those combined. Even as a 90s kid who didn't get a lot of the R-rated movie references in 90s Simpsons, it was still my favorite show, but even then I found myself feeling really cynical about the Simpsons Meet Jay Sherman episode. And Lisa plays the part of Brian there, making the same self-aware jokes. So I wanted to like this. I really really did.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here: In the South Park episode, it begins with the Muhammad joke on Family Guy, and Peter's comic seems to be a rip-off of that joke (the For Pete's Sake comics were funny, I'll give it that) which was of course the Danish guy who drew the Muhammad comic. Then Cartman meets Bart, and they talk about the worst thing they've done (Bart's being a little prank like Jebediah Springfield or something, and Cartman's of course being forcing a bully eat his own parents,) I could go on but this is nothing original, and it wasn't original when South Park did it either. That was the fucking point. And there WOULD have been a million ways to make this good. I've mentioned it before, but there was an episode of Family Guy (the Bank Valut one) which moved me more than any Simpsons episode possibly could and gave me respect for the show for the first time. I watch Family Guy when it's on now because of that episode, probably for the same reason a lot of our parents started watching The Simpsons around Maggie's First Word: "this isn't just some cartoon your kids are watching." I dunno. I'm rambling now but I was truly disappointed.

Wait, I thought they *shot* Quagmire's cat. Did he get another one? Am I thinking of something else? I remember seeing Quagmire's cat die, and I remember Quagmire being devastated when he found out, but who knows how they did it or why.

For you, the day Quagmire's cat died was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday.

The thing about Family Guy is that it actually WOULD work as a panel-panel-punchline comic strip. The problem with Family Guy is that it's animated, takes up 22 minutes of itself, and usually has this really self-indulgent long cringe humor running gag, and it's agonizing to watch.

That said, I notice that Harry Shearer didn't contribute any voices whatsoever. Somewhat telling.

tl;dr

Agreed. I haven't really watched either show in a while, but none of the Simpsons voices sounded quite right, and until I looked it up, I just figured that Family Guy hired impersonators. I'd actually like to see a show more like that MacFarlane shorts thing: "that was funny, that was.. that was stupid.. Haha that was pretty good, etc." all within two minutes or so. Attempts at emotional attachment are pretty much thrown out the window (like the Bank Vault episode or the one where Brian dies.. of course Stewie has a time machine.. sorry spoilers not that anyone cares) whereas the emotional attachment I inherently have from the Simpsons made me genuinely concerned over the announcement that a "beloved character would die." Like Bart gets hit by a car again and doesn't make it, or Homer has another heart attack and dies. There's nothing Professor Frink can do to bring them back, and the dynamic of the show would shift completely. Family Guy it's just kinda "heheh I'm high and am trying to fall to sleep humor" at 4AM.

http://youtu.be/3hT9_8SV5f0

The cat killing.

It wasn't even that he killed the cat, it was the idea that he decided it would be funny, or something, to shave the cat, because his friend loved the cat.

http://youtu.be/ghxQYUfw_K8

It wasn't like traumatic or anything, it was just the end of my suspension of disbelief in Peter Griffen's humanity. It took me a while to realize what had happened. Just didn't want to watch Family Guy anymore.

Well, does the Simpsons ever do Futurama references? The closest thing I can think of is "The always vivacious head of Kitty Carlisle".

There have been Futurama references in at least two episodes of The Simpsons, as well as in a handful of expanded universe sources, like comics and games. This whole video is riddled with references to other Seth McFarlane shows, including American Dad and The Cleveland Show, so why not give Futurama a nod?

BUT GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! I have discovered this:

http://theinfosphere.org/Simpsorama

Honestly, though. Can you imagine how excellent it would have been had they done the carwash scene with Lois and Amy Wong?

That's awesome. I was under the impression that they couldn't do Futurama since Comedy Central bought the intellectual rights, because at least a Fry or Bender cameo on the saucer makes perfect sense. What I'd like to see is a Life in Hell crossover. I'm holding out that Cognitivedissonance's theory is true and that the show ends where it began, and maybe this season is just self-referential and fun. I keep having to remind myself that this is not a Simpsons episode.

Blinky and Bongo have appeared in both series, albeit only as easter eggs.

This was so on-the-nose there's 0% they did not have access to at least a rough draft of the script or a basic outline.

It looks to me like everything that was on the nose could have been taken from the clips that were released in advance, but they would have had to act quick.

Yeah. Right down to the applause.

Yeah, what the fuck?

The Simpsons and Family Guy have both set the bar pretty low and this still manages to scrape it.

Hey.

Not you, I'm just talking to my oven.

yes, even mediocre modern Simpsons can still get a laugh out of me now and then; I've never laughed at Family Guy and in a proper world it would have never been renewed.