- Fox
- Haven’t you always dreamt of this moment? No?
I’d like to know exactly who was clamoring for the Family Guy/The Simpsons crossover that Fox aired on Sunday night. By all accounts (my social-media feeds), there isn’t a ton of overlap in their current audiences: if you are still into either show’s shtick, you hate the other show’s shtick. That is, you are either “over” The Simpsons or you never got into Family Guy.
And because MacFarlane’s team helmed the crossover, there are offensive jokes aplenty, the worst of which is the prank-call-gone-bad scene. The punchline—delivered by Stewie, because it’s just sooo outrageous to have a baby say these things—is “Your sister’s being raped.” This “joke” is just such a fucking dud. Although he doesn’t laugh, Bart doesn’t so much as gasp when Stewie utters the line, and the show quickly cuts away to another scene. Family Guy writers purport to subvert sexism (and racism) by making jokes of this nature, but they usually just defer to the cheap laugh. They never aim up, so they never actually send up, so they should just quit trying to disguise their asshole tendencies as “edgy humor.”
