You may have noticed that there was no Monday Sunday Roundup this week, and the reason for that is quite simple: save for the Monday night Patriots/Chiefs laugher, I actually didn't watch any football this past weekend. I missed the Thursday night game, in which the Redskins got shithammered by the Giants, because I was working; therefore, there was no reason for me to get up early on Sunday to watch any of the games, because I worked Saturday and Sunday nights too. What can I say, I'm a dedicated professional. A dedicated professional who has used up all of his sick time for the year. To be fair, I actually was sick all the days I called off, except the one I used the day before my vacation this past August. Nobody asked you!
Here's some historical perspective for what this post is actually about. In the past five or so years, I have deliberately missed one Sunday Night Football game. That is to say, I made a conscious decision not to watch NBC's weekly football game. That one time was last October, for the series finale of Breaking Bad. I don't even remember what the game was, honestly, because it's Walter freaking White on my television screen for the last time! These are the kinds of sacrifices I make every day in the struggle of life, ladies and gentlemen.
So anyway, this past Sunday night. There was an event that occurred that, had I had the opportunity, I would have once again made a sane and rational decision to skip football for. The season premiere of Family Guy is not a big event in the Zane compound most years. This one, however, was the culmination of a combined 38 years of television programming. This episode of Family Guy had a new setting. It had a plot nobody would have ever thought in a bajillion years would ever occur. The Griffins were going to Springfield. The Griffins were about to meet... the Simpsons.
Here's some more historical perspective, just in case you guys haven't wasted the last quarter-century of your lives like I have: this is not the first crossover episode the Simpsons has ever done. Way back when (I can't remember the year without looking it up, and it's really not that important anyway), the Simpsons did a crossover episode with a little-remembered and criminally underrated animated show called The Critic, where the main character of the latter, Jay Sherman, came to Springfield to judge a movie festival. Now, there are differences here. This was an episode of the Simpsons with Jay Sherman in it, and the Simpsons writers had total control over the plot. The FG crossover was an episode of Family Guy, which has a different style. If you watched both of these episodes, you'll see the differences. They're striking.
It's no secret that both shows have both their fanatics and their share of harsh critics (*rimshot*). A lot of people say that Family Guy was, and remains, a cheap and inferior knockoff of The Simpsons. Some people say that the Simpsons wore out their welcome over a decade ago. I disagree with both of these sentiments. Family Guy has always gone its own way, with mostly mixed results. I enjoy Family Guy, but I am firmly in the camp of The Simpsons if you're comparing the two shows. It's better and it always has been. In 25 years on the air, a show is bound to lose some of its original edge, though I can honestly say that the Simpsons still has the same humor that made me a fan in the late 80's/early 90's.
Onto the show. I have to give Seth McFarlane a ton of credit for how this episode played out. He was very generous to The Simpsons, almost to the point of blatant admiration. Also, it seemed that he let the Simpsons writers write for their own characters, which was a good idea; I don't want to see Homer Simpson acting like Peter Griffin. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't be funny. This episode was funny. McFarlane even toned down some of Family Guy's more.. ahem.. racy humor, and it totally worked. It had Family Guy-style riffing on Simpsons-style humor, and it was just perfect. (Stewie says, after Homer walks out of the shadows of the Kwik-E-Mart, "why does a convenience store this small have so many shadowy parts?")
I don't want to write an actual point-by-point review of the show, because to do that I'd have to watch it again, and I don't have time for that right now. Also, in case some of you haven't watched it yet, I don't want to give away too much. I ain't no asshole. I'll just say that when Peter and Homer were fighting, Peter knocked Homer down and let out a Homer-original "WOOHOO!" Homer got back up, roundhouse kicked Peter, and deadpanned, "Road House!" I lost it at this point. I died. My heart stopped. I pooped in my pants, and my spirit rose from my body to give me CPR, slap me in the face, and make me finish watching the episode.
If you jerks don't know what my Cutler Scale is, then you're just gonna have to read my other blogs. On the Cutler Scale, "Simpsons Guy" registered an astonishing 117%. If you DO know what I'm talking about, and you're wondering how an animated TV show that can't possibly have arm strength can have more of it than Jay Cutler, I'll just remind you that A.) it's (50%) my blog, B.) it's (100%) my scale, and C.) nobody asked you and you can eat rocks. Eat rocks? Is that how the saying goes? Kick shit? Either way, eating rocks sounds painful, so that's what we're gonna stick with. And I just coined a new phrase for when I wanna tell someone to go eff themselves. Eat rocks, dickhead.
So yeah, there was no Monday Sunday Roundup, and aside from my lack of football, my level of mental and physical exhaustion had already peaked sometime around last Saturday afternoon, and I just simply did not care. But that's all in the past and I'll see you guys on Monday! Take care.
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