Katawa Shoujo Forums

i saw recently there was a episode of family guy where brial met a blind girl and spent the entire episode deciveing her and the show making light or fun (depending on your views) of her to the point where she breakes up with him and he immedatly turns around and pretends to be someone else to "get" with her.
a month or two ago i probably would have waved it off as family guy being family guy as iv gotten fairly used to their dark humor but after playing katawa shoujo i couldent help but get angry at them for making fun of and deciving her because she was blind and in the end there wasent even a lessoned learned type of ending all i could think was how if this was real how terrible it would be (not that it wasent terrible in the cartoon to)
i guess even if you think its just a game sometimes things change you without even realizing

I have hated Family Guy for a long time, and I couldn't put my finger on the reason why... but then someone said something that nailed it home for me. He said something along these lines: "The Family Guy's humor is based entirely on making fun of whoever is at a disadvantage." In other words, pointing and laughing when people fall, and kicking 'em while their down. It's not so much a matter of picking "acceptable targets," like... say... Donald Trump or Hitler. That wouldn't earn them the description of "edgy." They choose targets that are politically incorrect, but specifically, ones that the fewest people can sympathize with.

So they do horrible things to the neighbor in the wheelchair (among others), and poke fun at all sorts of people who have serious problems. Racial minorities are dangerous territory, so they usually prefer targeting people with physical disabilities and mental ones (anything involving the older son), celebrities whose popularity has dropped, and the like. Heck, they even specifically target SMART people, too. Any minority target they can get away with. That's why I prefer The Simpsons. That show parodies and pokes fun, but it always has a point. Family Guy is just the kid on the playground telling "naughty" jokes to the other 3rd graders.

I'd like to say something about that specific episode, but it's just too typical of Family Guy to say much. They present an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson, but halfway through, the writers just stick their tongues out at it and run away giggling. I'm sure they've done that at least once with every well-known disability.

The writers of Family Guy have used up all of their jokes. They need to take that show off the air.

A Humbled Fan wrote:The writers of Family Guy have used up all of their jokes. They need to take that show off the air.

While I agree with you, this leaves me curious whether you think the same of The Simpsons, since it predates Family Guy by years....

Absolutely. I used to watch them a long time ago, but I no longer feel their writing is of the same caliber that it used to be at.

As long as family guy has viewers it'll have new shows. It has a mindless fanbase that likes the ideal of not needing to think to laugh. Simpson's turned to a similar device once all it's jokes were dried up. It has degraded media with the assistance of other similar based shows. I pretty much stopped watching TV, it does leave a decent sized hole of time though, luckily I have my books.

I actually still like The Simpsons, but I have never watched it regularly. I watch it when other people prompt me to, or when it just happens to be on when I feel like watching TV. (This occurs less often now that I have DVR and can choose my shows... but I do watch a lot of Futurama instead.)

The idea that Family Guy rewards not thinking is so true. Conversely, while the Simpsons *can* appeal to lesser minds, it has always had jokes that only the smarter viewers would get. (For instance, in one episode, a scientist tries to get the attention of a crowd of scientists by saying "It has come to my attention that pi is exactly three!" ...This is apparently the scientist's equivalent of shouting "penispenispenispenis" in a crowded room.)

You can't take the Simpsons from me! Do what you want with Family Guy!

I acknowledge that the new episodes are mostly trash. Though, for some reason, it's been tradition in my family for years. Every weekday, 6 PM, we watch the Simpsons. It's just what we do, even though we all only like the older episodes. We even say how we hate it and don't want to watch. But we still do...

I like to think I'm an optimist, and on the rare occasions I watch Family Guy, I say to myself, "Okay, there's no way Peter can be any stupider." And then I see things like "locking" himself *inside* a car (all cars can only be locked from the outside), sticking his penis into an electric pencil sharpener, or spending tens of thousands of dollars on helicopters (the "Petercopter") and dirigibles (the "Hindenpeter") only to crash them (okay, that was pretty funny, watching the Petercopter crash and tear up Joe's yard)...

If playing the game makes you so sensitive you get upset over a TV show I can only say this:

You sure as hell don't wanna go read the webcomic Cyanide and Happiness......

And I don't watch TV at all,and never got shit like the Simpsons or such,Japanese anime is plenty twisted though

Kind of an odd coincidence how close the release date of Katawa Shoujo was to the airing date of that episode of Family Guy.

But yeah, can't really say I'm surprised Family Guy would have an episode like that. But it did make me think of Lilly when I saw the preview of it.

Its a Humor Show, now? They have to make fun of something or someone, no need to over think about it

A ghost... wrote:If playing the game makes you so sensitive you get upset over a TV show I can only say this:

You sure as hell don't wanna go read the webcomic Cyanide and Happiness......

And I don't watch TV at all,and never got shit like the Simpsons or such,Japanese anime is plenty twisted though

Strangely, I DO read Cyanide and Happiness, off and on. It doesn't bother me like The Family Guy does. It's probably because Cyanide and Happiness pushes the limits purely for the sake of pushing them, while the writers of The Family Guy seem to be genuinely cruel and ignorant.

As for Japanese anime, the range of harmless to offensive is just as wide you'll find in American entertainment. The difference is that Japanese animation is more resistant to being pigeonholed than American animation. (In America, most ordinary viewers only accept two types of animation: Kid's Show, and Crude Satire.)

Tomate wrote:Its a Humor Show, now? They have to make fun of something or someone, no need to over think about it

There are many kinds of humor other than mockery.

Back when I was in an acting class, we were taught 7 different devices for humor. Mockery, or "Deflation" as it was called, only accounted for one of them. Most of the humor devices didn't require someone to be the butt of the joke, actually.

Radien wrote:I have hated Family Guy for a long time, and I couldn't put my finger on the reason why... but then someone said something that nailed it home for me. He said something along these lines: "The Family Guy's humor is based entirely on making fun of whoever is at a disadvantage." In other words, pointing and laughing when people fall, and kicking 'em while their down. It's not so much a matter of picking "acceptable targets," like... say... Donald Trump or Hitler. That wouldn't earn them the description of "edgy." They choose targets that are politically incorrect, but specifically, ones that the fewest people can sympathize with.

So they do horrible things to the neighbor in the wheelchair (among others), and poke fun at all sorts of people who have serious problems. Racial minorities are dangerous territory, so they usually prefer targeting people with physical disabilities and mental ones (anything involving the older son), celebrities whose popularity has dropped, and the like. Heck, they even specifically target SMART people, too. Any minority target they can get away with. That's why I prefer The Simpsons. That show parodies and pokes fun, but it always has a point. Family Guy is just the kid on the playground telling "naughty" jokes to the other 3rd graders.

I'd like to say something about that specific episode, but it's just too typical of Family Guy to say much. They present an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson, but halfway through, the writers just stick their tongues out at it and run away giggling. I'm sure they've done that at least once with every well-known disability.

family guy makes fun of everyone and everything, disadvantaged or 1%ers. to say that they should stay away from making fun of joe, or the blind girl in that episode, or the down syndrome girl, is far more insulting than anything family guy has ever done.

yah when i saw the blid girl the first thing i thought of was lilly
when joe first appeared in family guy they diddent make fun of him they made him into a hero cop after a while they slowly started making fun of/mocking him more and more
i think the episode with the down sindrome girl was mean to show that that people like that can be as mean or rude as the rest of us the blind girl episode diddent have that it was mostly mocking the blind, i do read cyanide and hapiness but its harder to get offended by a 3 or 4 panel comic than a 30 min cartoon
thats exactly why i like the simpsons though even if they went low enough to have like one of the characters mistreating a blind person they would have some kind of moral where people would benifit from it
i dont know if KS made me over sensitive to the sort of thing i would expect from a show like family guy or im just looking at it in a new light i think its a good thing though because there are limits to what is dark humor and offensive and i think im starting to see it more clearly