Whether we love it or hate it, especially given its toilet humor, it made an impression on the larger landscape of comedy. You can see Family Guy's influence in a lot of works today, especially when it comes to how recurring jokes and repetition are used. That's gotta count for something, right?

There are some episodes of Family Guy that I do enjoy, but I feel it has experienced a sharp decline in writing quality in recent years. A lot of the jokes feel like McFarlane is attempting to be as offensive as possible, relying on gags and stereotypes for shock value, rather than writing genuinely funny jokes.

A show that has never landed me, but has earned my begrudging respect. It is Seth at his lowest, cheap gags, shock and edge all around. Yet, I have noticed he is often pretty experimental too, take the Goldeneye tribute and the Brian and Stewie vault episode, or the clear growth you can see with it's writing, where he does his best to address his mistakes. So.. while I may not enjoy it, I'm cool with it existing if it gives Seth a practicing ground to work on and fund everything else he does.

Family Guy is just a weird mixture of elements it's hard to discuss the whole. A biting, well-observed comedy by a theatre nerd who likes musicals, has a witty turn of phrase, and knows exactly when to double back on a premise for laughs. A myopic, adolescent, ultimately conservative love letter to smacking down anyone who tries to rise above their place. The quality of each individual episode is dictated by how much of either you end up getting.

Much like The Simpsons, Family Guy is an adult animated sitcom with a major drop in quality in its later years, but some of the most recent seasons do succeed at selling a lot of the same comedy and clever writing that made it such a hit to begin with. The offensive and pop culture-laden nature of Family Guy's humor might be a turnoff to some, but that shouldn't detract from how great a show it is more often than not.