Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side
Something, Something, Something Dark Side, the newest incarnation of Family Guy’s Star Wars parodies, is a pleasant surprise after a particularly unpleasant season. Seth MacFarlane has done what George Lucas did with Episode III and barely managed to salvage his series.
Put bluntly, Family Guy is no longer funny, nor has it been for some time. The show that was once putting viewers in hysterics with its zany characters and ridiculous gags long ago fell victim to its own success. Its famous cutaway gags are no longer witty, and all too often rely on increasingly obscure 80’s pop culture references or gross-out humor that would make Eric Cartman blush. Its weekly plots seem to be one long running diatribe of MacFarlane’s political views, which lack the clever subtlety of the Simpsons or South Park’s satiric bite. All of this will lead viewers to the regrettable conclusion that MacFarlane and his writers stopped trying sometime around 2005.
Indeed, what makes SSSDS work is that the Family Guy writers don’t have control over the story and can’t rely on cutaways. The result is that they are forced to take what made the show hilarious in its early seasons, its character’s charming stupidity, and work it into the grand narrative of Lucas’ magnum opus. Not only is it fun to watch the Griffins act out their parts as the heroes of the Star Wars saga, but fun to watch how bit players in the Family Guy universe are each incorporated into the saga to give life to the minor characters in surprisingly funny ways.
Although it is entertaining, the piece as a whole continues to suffer from two other Family Guy habits: repeated breaking of the fourth wall and padding. Some jokes are repeated ad nauseum to the point where one must wonder whether they are there to fill time. Moreover, the characters comments on the parody leave us with the feeling like we are watching the episode with someone interrupting the show every few minuets It destroys the flow of the story nearly as effectively as the two nerds in the front row of the theater arguing over the inaccuracies in the Phantom Menace.
Overall, the episode is well done. It gets in an above average number of laughs and will please Star Wars fans with its in depth references and shot for shot recreations of some classic scenes. Much like the film, it will leave viewers eager for a conclusion, both for this series of entertaining Star Wars parodies, and the unfunny filler that MacFarlane airs in between them during the rest of the season.
