I Know I Should Find This Ironic, But Really I'm Just Bored As Hell

    Reading this article, I was reminded how much of a minority I seem to be in, though the author clearly ought to learn to distinguish between ubiquity and ubiety.  The Simpsons may be long in the tooth and well-past its prime, but Family Guy has demonstrated something I didn't think possible, the original wisdom of TV executives.  FG has become painfully, excruciatingly, brain-wrenchingly AWFUL, every joke a flashback tiresomely and forcedly teed-up and and then putted to the green.  (Yes, putted.  Is there any gag on that show that doesn't run ten-times longer than it should?)  There's nothing about the resurrected show that isn't predictable ("it's just like that time...."), belaboured (enough Indiana Jones, Star Wars and That Girl references, please...), or derivative.  Oh, and SMUG, as one gathers only an undead show can be.  "Funnier" than ever?  Hardly.  FG is the Republican party of contemporary satire: all lip-service to itself, laughless and often mean-spirited lip-service that can't, and doesn't even bother to try to, conceal its desperation.  In one season, FG hit a nadir which The Simpsons, even at its worst, hasn't yet neared because it has not forgotten how to maintain its balancing whimsy.  FG, well, it has become a cartoon version of Dennis Miller, pretentiously polymathic and utterly humourless.  Once it was on par with The Simpsons; now, it's absolutely no better than the Air Farce or 22 Minutes: loud, obnoxious, and so hamfistedly puerile as to suggest the wit of an angry twelve year-old.   When the show's fans finally figure this out, I'll welcome the chance to put the zombie Griffins back into the ground.  In fact, as Peter would say, that'd be freakin' sweet.