If you love it or hate it Family Guy is an Animated Sitcom about a stupid but lovable oaf named Peter Griffin and his family. Peter's family includes his wife Lois, his teenage daughter Meg; who is the butt of his jokes, his son Chris, who is a younger version of Peter, and his infant son Stewie; who's goal is global domination. Also living with the family is a martini drinking talking dog named Brian.

The main thing to know about Family Guy is that it prides itself on integrating pop-culture references and parody to create most of the shows humor. However, as much as Family Guy uses the world of pop-culture, we too, the viewer, reference Family Guy in our everyday lives. For example; the other day my roommate said that he wanted to play the video game Call of Duty. When he did this, I had to make fun of the fact that my roommate said "duty", just like in an episode of Family Guy. I don't know what it is about it, but everyday I hear a reference to Peter Griffin's antics from my 14 year old brother to my 32 year old cousin. You would think by now that I would get tired of hearing constant references to the show, but every time I hear someone use the name Will Ferrell, I think of Stewie going over to his house and beating the crap out of him because the movie Bewitched wasn't funny.




In my opinion, I feel what makes lines of dialogue from Family Guy so catchy with the general public is that the writers of the show try to drive their comedy out of common knowledge references into jokes. This was exemplified by one of the episodes starting with Peter listing all the shows that were canceled by Fox during the time Family Guy was off the air. The reason why this was funny is that everyone had an idea that Fox had a reputation for canceling shows, and Family Guy took a chance by pointing this out. See the clip here.



See, that's how Family Guy integrates itself into what would be considered as our every-day culture, because it points out things that we may witness while walking down the street that we are too afraid to admit that are funny. However, by creating his show Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane has given us the wonderful gift of actually being able to admit when certain things we see in our day to day lives are funny because we can connect them to a random Family Guy reference. Based on this conclusion, as long as Seth Macfarlene can give us the freedom to be funny, even about the most obscure topics, Family Guy references and the show itself could be around for a very long time whether some people like it or not.

Watch Family Guy Sundays at 9/8c on Fox or online.