Lucky there's a family guy... (Family Guy - Season 4 (DVD))

Member Name: Luce100

Product:	Family Guy - Season 4 (DVD)
Date:	29/04/06 (518 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: witty, crude and oh so watchable!

Disadvantages: There are only 13 episodes on the box set!

Okay it only came out on Monday but I felt compelled to write a review on the show I love so much.

A little bit of history:
You may have heard some of this if you to are a family guy fan or you may not. Back in 1999 Family Guy first aired in America on Fox and had a large audience because it was shown straight after the Superbowl (which is HUGE over there). Anyway overtime the rating started to plummet due to the competition on other channels, with programmes like Friends that were never going to be beaten. It was constantly moved around from it's slot and even the most avid viewers had trouble catching the show. After 2 seasons the show was cancelled and picked up again when Fox's new president (Gail Berman) took over. The third season did poorly and the decision was made to shelve the show for good.

Over here in the UK Family Guy aired on channel 4, but as far as I remember I was one of the few people who watched it, it never really took off in a big way.

Anyway re-runs of the shown started being shown on American channels Fox and The Cartoon Network, and this time they were getting high ratings. In 2003 the first season was released on dvd and fans went nuts- sales were through the roof! As each of the DVD's were released the sales were huge and suddenly everyone was talking about this hilarious show that got cancelled...Family Guy! It was at this point that Fox's president made the decision to get Seth MacFarlane creator of the series to make a brand new season.. the season just released on DVD that I will be reviewing today!

“Synopsis
The story of the Griffin family continues with the story of bumbling, well-intentioned father Peter; his sweet but oblivious wife Lois; and their teenagers, dim-witted Chris and awkward Meg. The most recognisable characters, however, remain the family's masterminds: evil genius baby Stewie, determined to achieve complete world domination at the age of one, and Brian, an erudite martini-swilling dog, the family's lone voice of reason. Includes all the episodes from Season Four.” - Amazon

I will start off with the one drawback of the set, it only contains 13 episodes, which is a little disappointing, but the quality of the episodes and the extras on the set most definitely make up for this flaw.

So what do we get? The plots are pretty outrageous (as we have come to expect with Family Guy) and they range from the season opener where Peter and Lois find they have lost the spark in their marriage and Peter impersonated Mel Gibson in order to spice things up to Meg getting a make-over and being coming a teen idol to Quagmire having an affair with Cleveland’s wife to Chris leaving Quahog and ending up with the Peace Corps in a far away tribe before getting hitched. Along the way Peter is declared mentally retarded… or petarded, Brian appears on an episode of the Bachelorette, Lois is arrested for kleptomania and becomes a model and Peter befriends James Wood… sort of. The plots are silly and set up hundreds of jokes at the expense of pop culture.

It isn’t particularly intellectual humour, I’ll give you that. It’s juvenile and rife with bodily function jokes. Peter goes blind from swallowing too many nickels, it’s not overly complex stuff. But it is not without it’s appeal and the episodes generally last past a few viewings due to the fact that they tend to push the limits of what is considered to be in good taste.

One of the great things about Season 4 is that the pop culture institutions assaulted get bigger and better this time around. When Meg becomes a great parody of teen superstars in “Don’t make me over”, when Brian stars on The Bachelorette in “Brian the Bachelor”, poking fun at reality tv and several slams throughout the season at “Star Wars”.

Who would I recommend this too?
Well first and foremost, anybody who enjoyed “Family Guy before – trust me you will not be disappointed! Anyone who likes bold comedy, or anyone who has watched every episode of The Simpsons about 50 times now, and is looking for something new, and boundary-pushing.

It is a worthy investment to your dvd collection, go out and buy it now!

Small summary of the special features of the box set:
• Audio commentary on selected episodes – (10 out of the 13 are available, which is pretty substantial when you compare that with many of the box sets out there)
• 'Making Of Season 4' featurette – (Interesting to watch and comes with some history)
• Preview of American Dad! – (very similar in style to Family Guy, guess it was a case of why break the mould when there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it!)
• Deleted scenes – (Always great to watch!)
• Stills gallery
• Multi-angle table read featurette showing the celebrity voice cast in action – (These are really quite extensive and funny to watch.. it’s quite strange seeing the voice of Lois or Stewie etc coming out of a real person. Seth Green is particularly funny as Chris!)

Summary: Give it a try!