Family Guy, "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven": Please call me Dirk Diggler

I don't normally write about "Family Guy" -- nor, for that matter, do I always watch "Family Guy." But I wound up needing some laughs late last night, and after a very weird "Simpsons" episode (which somehow managed to combine a parody of Bing Crosby in "Going My Way" with a parody of "Saw") failed to provide them, I put on Peter, Stewie and company and wound up watching the best episode of that show I've seen in a while. A few brief thoughts coming up just as soon as I order a McDLT...

You can call "Family Guy" comedy porn, or comedy junk food, or whatever unhealthy-but-gratifying metaphor you prefer, but when the random jokes are good -- as they were throughout -- I can let go the fact that there isn't much of a story holding them up. And, actually, the story of born-again Meg and atheist Brian felt more cohesive than your average "Family Guy" plot, so it had that going for it -- in addition to Peter warning the audience to change the channel on a Meg-heavy episode, which is the sort of thing I imagine "The Simpsons" writers occasionally want to do if they're giving us an episode focused on Marge.

Stewie kidnapping the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was more what I usually expect from the show: nonsensical, and it and didn't have an ending, but the jokes made me laugh a lot, from the Trekkies all asking non-"Star Trek" questions at the con, to Patrick Stewart and Stewie getting into another of his endless h-before-w pronunciation arguments, to Stewart and Wil Wheaton recreating the "You'll get nothing and like it!" scene from "Caddyshack."

It ain't deep, but when you've got the voice of Lt. Worf asking to be called "Dirk Diggler" at the bowling alley, or God recast as the early-'80s Flash Gordon, it makes me happy enough not to mind.

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Flowers in the dustbin

Spoilers for, in order, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "The Simpsons," "Family Guy" and Ken Burns' "The War" part one coming up just as soon as I pick up some deep-dish pizza...

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" remains in a groove after last week's brilliant episode. The show is always at its best when Larry's idea of how the world should work is at odds with how the world actually works, and here he gets into trouble over excessive ice cream sampling, inequitable perfume store lines and whether or not the flowers a a roadside memorial are available for picking. (I've written often in the past that I can usually find a way to see Larry's POV on this stuff; not so much with the flowers.) And as he gets into trouble with Cheryl, and Loretta, and the private school dean of admissions, and even Funkhouser (who is or isn't Larry's best friend, depending on which one you ask), he has to apologize a lot. But that's okay; as Larry puts it, "You don't need to tell me how to apologize to people. I've been apologizing to people on a daily basis since I'm six years old."

Bob Einstein as Funkhouser is probably my favorite "Curb" supporting character. There's just something about his stoic suffering in the face of Larry's standard behavior that always kills me. (He also, even at this age, has this intimidating physical presence that suggests he very well could pop Larry's head off if he wanted to.) Here, Funkhouser was involved in the episode's best running gag, about the foul-smelling 50 dollar bill. I'll admit that I'm a sucker for humor about stuff that reeks ("The Smelly Car" is always a "Seinfeld" I treasure), and you have to ignore certain questions like why Larry doesn't just buy the flowers with a credit card, but Larry throwing the 50 like a grenade into the center of the wake was another perfect subplot-connecting "Curb" conclusion, like last week's "I know who Anonymous is!" from Cheryl.

I wrote about the "Simpsons" and "Family Guy" premieres in Friday's column, but I want to add a few points. First, I loved that the "Simpsons" opening credits acknowledged the events of the movie, both with Bart skateboarding through the rebuilding Springfield and with Spider-Pig's cameo. (Though was I the only one who wanted more, more, more Spider-Pig?) It also looked like a lot of the footage of Homer's beloved private plane taking off and landing was done in the same richer, more three-dimensional animated style that the movie employed (or, at least, like "Futurama" employed); I'm going to be curious to see whether there's more of that moving forward. Like I said in the column, most of the big laughs were in the first act ("Hey you, beer me"), but I like that, even within the far wackier universe the series now takes place in, there was an attempt to take Homer's desire for success -- and Marge's desire to give it to him -- semi-seriously. (Question: why do I know the music they play over Homer's trip to Krusty Burger? I know it's a famous piece -- or film score -- but I can't for the life of me identify it.)

Like I said in the column, this was my favorite "Family Guy" episode in quite some time: all pop culture humor and no straining for plot or character, which the writers don't care about. I was, however, amused that even within an all-spoof episode, MacFarlane and company still had to go on tangents about other bits of pop culture, whether it was John Williams' orchestra performing the "People's Court" theme (good) or Obi-Wan recreating the "Dirty Dancing" finale (much longer than it needed to be). I would say that the "Robot Chicken" episode -- subject of the very funny meta-argument between Peter (voice by the "Family Guy" creator) and Chris (voic by the "Robot Chicken" co-creator) -- had some more laugh-out-loud moments (their version of the Tatooine cantina -- particularly the biography of the guy whose hands get cut off -- was better than the equivalent "Family Guy" scenes), but "Family Guy" got in a lot of good, affectionate digs at the original movie.

Finally, I'm not sure how much interest there's going to be in "The War," especially with PBS debuting it on the eve of the new TV season. Admittedly, "The Civil War" and "Baseball" did just fine going up against the network launches ("Civil War" was the biggest hit PBS has ever had), but those aired 17 and 13 years ago, respectively -- back when you could also successfully program original scripted shows on Saturday night -- and they covered territory that wasn't nearly as well-trod as WWII has been the last few years.

So I don't know whether I'll be blogging about additional episodes, but I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the debut. First, as usual, Burns is a little too in love with the small details. I understand that he's trying to make us feel like the people of Waterbury, Mobile, etc. are our current friends and neighbors, but I don't need to know everyone's street address, for instance. I really love Tom Hanks reading the columns of Al McIntosh from Minnesota (Burns' interest in them led to last week's publication of a McIntosh book collection; if they ever do an audiobook with Hanks, I'm there), but for the most part, I admired the work of Burns and his researchers more than I was really engaged by it. There's more interesting stuff coming as early as the second episode (which features a great sequence about life on a Flying Fortress), but if I didn't have to watch the whole thing for work, I doubt I would have stuck it out that far.

Also, to expand on a thought in the column, Burns chooses to deal with the added Latino material in the most obnoxious, defiant way possible. The episode proper ends, with Norah Jones singing "American Anthem" and all that, then we get the passive-agressive "each had a story to tell" title card -- basically, "Sure, I can add this stuff, and stories about Native Americans and Greek immigrants and every other group you want, and I still wouldn't be able to tell everybody's story" -- and then a completely segregated segment on these two guys from L.A. And this is actually the best of the three tacked-on segments, as at least it lasts a little while, whereas the next two run about five minutes each. I'm not saying Burns should or shouldn't have acquiesced to the protesters, but either he should have stood firm or done a better job of integrating the material into the story proper. This is a solution guaranteed to annoy everybody.

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Heart vs. groin

A grab-bag blog entry last night, and a grab-bag column today, with four items of roughly equal length, about the "Simpsons" season premiere, the "Family Guy" spoof of "Star Wars," the "Burn Notice" season finale and the big "24" development that Fox decided to spoil several months early:

"Spider-Pig, Spider-Pig, does whatever a spider-pig... does..."

If those words fill your heart with joy, chances are you were one of the millions who bought tickets to "The Simpsons Movie" this summer (or, at least, that you saw the trailer on YouTube). I was one of those millions, and suffered multiple bouts of the hiccups from too much laughter (highlight, other than Spider-Pig: the "Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?" ticker ad), even though I’ve watched recent seasons of "The Simpsons" TV show more out of loyalty than merit.

So when I watched a review screener of the 19th (yes, 19th) season premiere of the show, I expected it to pale in comparison to the movie, even though I knew it would feature a Spider-Pig cameo. Instead, it felt oddly, comfortingly similar to the movie. The structure is similar, with the best jokes in the first act (Homer saves Mr. Burns’ life and is rewarded with a private jet flight to Chicago for some deep dish pizza), a bit of a lull to get the plot moving in the second (Marge hires Homer a life coach, voiced by guest star Stephen Colbert) and a third act with some genuine pathos and misadventures with a vehicle Homer shouldn’t be able to operate.

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