Family Guy Season 7
Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 273 minutes
Distributor: Fox

For the first half of this decade,' Family Guy' was a big deal, serving up witty and bizarre pop-culture references alongside fun storylines and hilarious characters. Cancelled after three seasons only to return triumphantly on the back of record-breaking DVD sales, this DVD set sees the series reach 100 episodes, and with it almost complete stagnation. Gone is the sense of controlled and calculated dadaism, replaced with what the press release gleefully refers to as "irrelevant" humour, as though this were somehow a good thing. One-note jokes and characters overstay their welcome by ridiculous margins. Remember the chicken fight from Season 2? It's back for a third time, carrying on for close to four minutes despite the joke having gotten old two seasons back. But it's not just the jokes that fall flat: the plots meander, by and large, in a bog of half-hearted morals and incredibly stilted dialogue. On occasion characters will stop and discuss the obvious lesson they learnt from the events that have occurred with absolutely no sense of 'South Park'-styled irony or even a gag to close on.

Eventually the notion that the show is even in a position to poke fun at these pop-culture icons, rather than becoming the target itself, seems absurd. They range from the pointless - an extended monologue about Colin Farrell not dressing well, devoid of metaphor or wit - to the simply untrue, such as a scene that portrays the Gyllenhaal siblings arguing over who has less talent. The show still does have its moments - the 100th episode double parter actually isn't too bad, a Mary Poppins joke in one episode had me laughing much longer than I expected, and now and again a gag hits the mark well enough to amuse, but by and large the show has simply become boring and mean-spirited.

The extras are very extensive, tragically making up for the bare bones release of the first three seasons a few years too late. The DVD commentaries popping up on every episode are literally embarrassing to listen to. At one point series creator Seth McFarlene goes to ridiculous lengths to defend a horrific rape/ murder 'joke' made against The Simpsons, calling bullshit on Fox's censors, whilst proclamations that the series is going from strength to strength are clearly false. As is often the case with animated releases, the features on the actual animation process are the most interesting, while the deleted scenes, hour-long live table read, and a ton of other content elicit a 'wow, they really tried hard here' response.
Success has been hard on the crew behind 'Family Guy'. Too caught up in its own success, the writers seem to have confused satire with a brand of comedy that doesn't exist, wherein it's funny if your punchlines have nothing to do with your jokes. There are plenty of shows Family Guy could learn a few lessons from (particularly 'South Park', a show that is, in its own way, doing right all the things 'Family Guy' is doing wrong), but it seems more content on mocking everything and anything around it, in increasingly superfluous and unnecessary fashion. Avoid it.

James O'Connor