Sunday, April 6, 2014

Television Families - The Griffins:

This is an old article pending revision.

Family Guy is a series named after Peter Griffin and is created by Seth MacFarlane who voices many of the characters. Peter is a large, overweight (but occasionally is much larger than that or thinner or muscular depending on different episodes) person that is married to Lois and has 3 children. He is the father to a fourth one which is the same age as his youngest that lives in the household. His name is Bertram and not many people know about him. His other children are Meg, Chris, and Stewie. He has a dog named Brian. Peter used to work at a toy factory, and then later becomes a fisherman and also works at a brewery.


The Family Guy series is similar to The Simpsons, which both have had the same animation company, Film Roman, (which nobody knows about), although there are other animation studios to assist with mass production. The characters are not yellow either, but are very simply drawn. There is featured background music by Ron Jones, a featured music composer for a few Star Trek episodes where the music is more noticeable and filled with suspense. In Family Guy, however, the music is usually matching of family situation comedies. They use many references to other TV series, such as Star Wars, "Homicide: Life On Sesame Street", G.I. Joe, the Pinball Number Count segments, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Kahn, Maude Findlay, Joyce Dewitt, and many others. The mayor of Quahog, Road Island is Adam West and the high school is James Woods High School. One incredible and unique thing about the series is the fact that not only can the other animals talk and have human behaviors, they can also interact with them as if they were humans and even have relationships with them, get married, and have children. For example there is Ted Turner with Seabreeze Pewterschmidt, Brian's brother Jasper who is homosexual and marries a human man named Ricardo, and Brian having a human son. When Chris and Peter hunt deer in the snow, one of the deer spots them and drives off in a snowmobile.


Viewer discretion is advised. Also, many of the episodes are edited for television, but are released unedited for adult programming blocks and for home releases (DVDs). The TV Ratings range from TVPG to TV14-DLSV. Some of the jokes are more violent than funny, such as a literal description of "Two and a half Men". There is a motion picture (not released yet as of 2008), which is intended for further adult content.


Lois Pewterschmidt Griffin is the wife of Peter, and mother of 3 of the children. She gives advice and is supportive of her children and sometimes seems clueless or that she does not seem to care sometimes towards their problems. She is a musician, and in her spare time is a piano teacher for children. While Peter wears white button up shirts with the sleeves rolled up, she wears similar looking green shirts. Sometimes she responds to disgusting things by saying "...That's a terrible word to say..." and then says a different word in the sentence than what is expected. She grew up with a wealthy family, and most of them strongly dislike Peter and some of them are abusive to him. Peter once was a staff member of one of their parties which Lois attended, and was not interested in any of the men that were there. Instead she sneaks away to the staff's party.


Meg Griffin wears a beanie hat on her head which is usually pink and has a matching shirt. She has very very large glasses and is very plain and very boring. She is the less liked character of the series by everybody who even laugh at the word "Meg". She often has problems in school social situations. While Quagmire is fantasizing women that are actually random objects, he sees Meg, who remains herself, and Quagmire says "Meg, get out of the way". Meg has a blank and bored expression on her face. This is similar to the "My prettiest Seahorse" episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where Patrick shows up (with a board stuck to his forehead) and SpongeBob does not realize that Mystery has left and Patrick is there instead and says "Just Get out of here you Stupid Dumb Animal!!" and then Patrick walks away with that same expression. She goes car shopping, and wants a red sedan, but Peter insists on buying a tank.


Chris Griffin is very large and wants to lose weight and gets upset when seeing that he has gained weight (but the extra weight is actually Stewie who is stuck inside of him between his skin. Chris means well, and appears to not be intelligent, but seems to be smarter than his father.


Stewie Griffin is a talking infant who speaks fluently (something else to be recognized on Family Guy). Not all of the very young children are as fluent as Stewie, and not many of them at all are plotting to either kill their parents or wish them dead. When Peter thinks he has breast cancer, but the results of cancer are negative, Stewie responds "But you promised The Fat One would parish!!". He always has attempted to kill his mother. His death threats are interpreted by Lois who responds to Stewie as "Oh, you just want your toy back. Here you go." Recently he has had other behaviors and does not plan on killing people as much because of near death experiences that he has had himself. Sometimes he has homosexual behavior.


Brian Griffin is their dog who behaves like a human most of the time. He still has some obvious dog behaviors such as barking. Peter sometimes treats Brian like a dog whenever he says something, and then Peter tries to guess what it as if he is barking. Then Brian actually starts barking, and then Peter understands exactly what he says. Brian is very smart, and well educated and explores different cultures and concerts. He also has a drug and alcohol problem. He has a human son named Dylan Flannagan and a homosexual canine brother who marries a human man. Brian is in love with Lois, and they even get married one time because Brian wanted to take care of the family in a fatherly role which was absent by Peter and everybody thought that Peter had died. They remain friends with each other, but sometimes one of them or both of does something otherwise. He is friends with Stewie and usually rescues him whenever he goes off on adventures. He is of course friends with Peter and gives him loads of advice. Sometimes this is difficult for both of them since Brian is smarter than Peter. The Griffins usually drive a red wagon, and quite possibly there are TWO wagons that are identical, since both of them are seen driving while one of them is out of town. Brian drives what appears to be one of those Crossover SUV things.


There are other characters that are not around as much. There is a squid that is not seen much because everybody ignores it. There is a maniacal monkey in Chris's bedroom closet. Ernie is a yellow rooster that is the same size as Peter and attacks him surprisingly. The show is literally interrupted for several minutes while the two fight each other until the entire town is wrecked.


Tom Tucker is a news anchor on Channel 5. Diane Simmons is another news anchor. Both of them usually spend the broadcasting time insulting each other. Asian Correspondent Trisha Takanawa, is seen covering the news stories in a Vulcan-like behavior. One example of her slow talking is "Di-anne I amm standinng ouutside of thiss hotell beecause theey donn't lett Asians insiii-ide." She is Japanese and has a slight resemblance to Connie Chung. Ollie Williams is the weather and sports anchor. His predictions and updates are very short, with a few short and very loud sentences. Examples are "It'sGonnaRain!!" and "He'sGonnaGetIt!!". This is actually a very accurate description of most morning news programs not spending a lot of time covering the weather.


Joe Swanson is a police officer that was injured in a fight with The Grinch. He gets around in a wheelchair. He is admired by Stewie who thinks Joe is a Cyborg. Bonnie is constantly Pregnant. When all the women want Quagmire out of the neighborhood, she says she doesn't want her baby coming into the world around Quagmire. Peter responds "You've been pregnant for like six years. Either have the baby or Don't!!" They have an older son named Kevin.


Cleveland Brown once did public auctions. He was hit in the head and now he talks very slowly and sounds as boring as Asian Correspondent Trisha Takanawa. His wife Loretta left him and cheated on him with Quagmire. She is disappointed when he does not seem to care. They have a hyperactive squeaky voiced son named Cleveland Jr.


Glenn Quagmire is an airline pilot that has the personality of Sam Malone and Charlie Harper. He sleeps together with numerous women including Loretta Brown. Cleveland responded to this as "It's better for it to happen somebody she knows instead of somebody that she can catch a disease from." He was married once to Joan Quagmire, a Wheel Of Fortune maid service agent who died after thinking that Quagmire was dead. Death thought that too, and he walked up to them. Joan defended Glen and indirectly offered to go in his place after touching Death. Another person died a similar way just a few seconds later.


The voices of Family guy is Alex Borenstein, who plays Lois, Loretta, Barbara, Marguerite, Asian Correspondent Trisha Takanawa. Seth Green plays Chris. In the pilot episode Meg Griffin is played by Rachael MacFarlane, and for the next 15 episodes was voiced by Lacey Chabert. Otherwise she has been voiced by Mila Kinis and Tara Strong. Mike Henry is Cleveland. Adam West and James Woods play themselves. Candace Bergen plays a few characters on Family Guy including Murphy Brown. Lori Alan plays Diane Simmons. Phil Lamarr does Ollie Williams. Seth MacFarlane does voices for numerous characters including Peter, and Mickey McFinnigan. He also is the voice of Brian, which he uses his original voice for but only Brian's voice is deeper sounding.

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