Family Guy is currently gearing up for its return for Season 23 of the animated sitcom, and fans have been gathering to talk about what they miss about some of the older episodes in its past. Family Guy is now celebrating its 25th anniversary, and although there are only 23 seasons due to the fact it was off the air on FOX for two of those years, it’s hard to imagine the adult animated world without it. It’s also no surprise that a series running for as long as it has also has gone through some significant changes over the years.
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Like many series of its kind, Family Guy has gone through many changes to its characters in order to continue telling new stories. Newer episodes offer up a much different family dynamic than there was seen in the first couple of season,s and it seems like it’s an entirely different era for the franchise overall. Sparked by a question from This_Apartment2174 on Reddit, Family Guy fans have made note of some of the bigger changes to the series over the years such as the animation and “healthier” family dynamic for the Griffin Family.
What’s Changed in Family Guy?
Some of the changes to later seasons are more obvious ones than other. Reddit user _awesumpossum_ noted that Peter in the earlier seasons seemed to be sillier and loved life. This isn’t entirely true as a lot of the newer episodes do see Peter just doing whatever he wants, but there is a more cynical edge to his shenanigans. There are a lot of things he does simply out of spite rather than stumbling into them for the benefit of his family. Overall, he’s just gotten more selfish in the later years as the harder edge to Peter led to bigger and wackier adventures were he doesn’t really have to think about his family’s wellbeing too.
As other fans note, bigger changes include more personality shifts like Stewie no longer desiring to kill his mother, Lois or Brian no longer being the voice of reason for Peter. These shifts ultimately made for better comedy at the end of the day for the kind of show Family Guy wanted to be. Rather than being held back by its original blue collar origins that saw Peter taking on family matters, Family Guy expanded itself in a much more exaggerated direction.
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Why Did Family Guy Change?
These changes might have been subtle at first, but they really started to spark when Family Guy came back from its initial cancellation. When it was revived by FOX a couple of years after finding success with its reruns on Adult Swim, Family Guy came back to FOX with a renewed (and more confident) sense of self. This meant that the show could take on bigger ideas like Peter stealing a secret sequel to The Passion of the Christ from Mel Gibson, and take its family dynamics in new directions.
Because while fans might miss some of the older elements of the series, Family Guy is arguably more successful now than it ever has been due to these changes. By allowing its cartoon characters to be cartoons without consequence, Family Guy has been opened to a whole new playground where Peter can do pretty much whatever he wants and everything will be reset by the end of the episode. This has led to some welcome changes to the others too to just make room for more stories.
Feelings won’t be hurt when Stewie decides to explore his own relationships, Brian continues to be a self-righteous jerk, Meg is disrespected into oblivion, Chris getting dumber each year, or Lois being a moment’s away from a full breakdown at all times. That’s just Family Guy. It’s just cartoons.
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Image courtesy of Marvel Television
