It's So Brilliant It's Retarded

Apparently this has been out for a while but I just saw it for the first time on AS tonight.

Wow.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't mind the newer Family Guy episodes because:

a. In many ways the show has evolved and become funnier, even if certain aspects are different (Stewie, for example).

b. I haven't had to watch these episodes a million times on DVD while at my friend's dealer's apartment, waiting for them to finish haggling in the kitchen.

Unfortunately, I do have to agree with the complaint that the show has gotten overly self-referential. I'm so bloody sick of calm, mustached, gay-guy. And Peter always hurting his knee. And the Chris-loving-old-pedophile. And Chris Griffin. Just Chris Griffin, as a character in general.

So whose brilliant idea was it to combine a show criticized for being too meta with the most meta-riffic franchise in history? I don't know. Probably Seth Green. He's a genius, let's give him creative control of things. (I'm not going to get into the whole Robot-Chicken thing. There version was better, and as such is a pretty compelling argument for why this should never have been made. But that would be complimenting Seth Green. And that I cannot do)

So basically it's an hour of watching minor Family Guy characters being arbitrarily crammed into various Star Wars roles (while hilariously utilizing their "well-fleshed-out" FG personalities...). Any "remember this hilarious guy"-free moment is taken up with plot-holes being picked apart, you know, the favoUrite hobby of15-year-olds-watching-Empire-Strikes-Back-for-the-first-time-since-early-childhood the world over.

The other big problem is that Chris Griffin, that guy who won the Most Likely To Be The Worst Part Of Good Things award back in high school, is the character filling Luke Skywalker's pearly robes, so there's a LOT of that to put with. (Seriously, why do all these people keep Seth Green around? They need his Hollywood good-looks? I guess genius loves company. I wonder if that Family Guy bit about Ben Affleck's contribution to Good Will Hunting set off any alarms in that ginger-frosted head.)

Actually, though, the most agonizing thing about all of this is realizing that those way-too-long Star-Wars-joke vignettes that have been happening like 18 times an episode for the past few seasons were even MORE ridiculously unnecessary than I previously assumed, given that they were given an HOUR-LONG episode to get-it-all-out.

But despite all that I must say one thing: Thank you for the Simply Red reference Seth MacFarlane. You brought something really special back into my life.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII. Want to fall from the stars...