Oh yeah, I'm a little upset at the moment...and if you're a fan of the Fox network's hit series Family Guy, I'll bet you are as well.
For some time now, fans have been waiting in eager antici-pation of what has come to be called "The Star Wars episode", thanks to Fox's publicity machine. With scenes of family dog Brian as Chewbacca and the deliciously malevolent baby Stewie as Darth Vader, it seemed this episode--subtitled "Blue Harvest", as an in-joke for Wars fans("Blue Harvest" was the fake name given to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi while it was filming back in '83, so as not to draw attention to the produc-tion)--would certainly go down in the annals of television history.
And it will: as one of series creator Seth McFarlane's bigg-est missteps and the show's biggest blunder since their shock-ingly lame Poltergeist parody a year ago.
As an opener for the show's sixth season, Family Guy: Blue Harvest started off with a great deal of promise: the Griffin clan are huddled around the tv when the power goes out. After the family mocks talking dog Brian's suggestion that they light some candles and read together, patriarch Peter(voiced by McFarlane, who also voices Brian and several other main characters) decides to tell a story about Star Wars. There follows a very clever title sequence which comically expands on what is known about the SW universe, and then the show begins in earnest.
We're soon aboard the rebel blockade runner, being intro-duced to sexaholic Quagmire(McFarlane) as C-3PO and Family Guy's lamest character Cleveland Brown(voice of Mike Henry) as R2-D2. There are a couple of moderately funny jokes here, one of them mainly concerning Princess Leia's(Lois Griffin, voice of Alex Borstein) attempts to download info into R2's memory banks(turns out Leia isn't really computer savvy). In the past, there have been several episodes which started off slow with a few jokes which were initial groaners or eyeball roll inducers. But usually the stories pick up quickly, and by the end of the episode you can't even remember what those clunkers were because you're just laughing so damn hard. Only about five minutes or so into Blue Harvest, however, I realized with a great dread that I wasn't viewing a parody of Star Wars...I was watching a flat-out homage to the movie, bordering on little more than an animated remake.
It turns out that like most humans on the planet, Seth Mc-Farlane is a huge Star Wars fan...so much so that, rather than just go ahead and skewer the SW universe as he should have done, like a mob toady approaching Don Corleone for a favor, he went to George Lucas himself and sought the godfather's blessing to do an episode of his own show! It's one thing to seek a creator's permission if you need to borrow a specific item or scene from their show/movie for an episode of your own production...but to curry favor in order to produce what essentially turns out to be a solid hour of ass-kissing is just sad. It's understandable from a legal point of view; McFarlane and crew lifted pretty much all of John Williams' score for the episode--and otherwise would have had to pay about a gajillion dollars for those rights. But with scenes recreated shot-for-shot and dialogue lifted line-for-line and simply put to animation... well, from a creative standpoint, the whole episode just smacks of sellout.
The laughs are painfully few and far between, and watch-ing the show via long-distance with a friend, I had to ask "Is it me, or does this episode just suck?!" To my honest surprise, I found no disagreement with my assessment. Don't get me wrong; I love Family Guy! It is one of the most creative, brutal and consistently funny shows to ever grace the dials. It's at its absolute best when it's completely irreverent, takes no prison-ers, pulls no punches and chooses to just let the jokes fly, consequences be damned. But if McFarlane wants to sing love sonnets to George Lucas, he should put on a garter belt and teddy, and do it in a darkened room over the phone...don't waste the time of every last one of your fans by bringing us in on the tryst!
To be fair, there were bright spots. The animation for this particular episode is the best ever displayed in the series(and I wouldn't be surprised if ILM had a hand in it). The Thai Fight-ers joke was great, the brutal smackdown Peter-as-Han Solo gives to Lois-as-Leia in referencing the destruction of Alderaan while they're in the Death Star's trash compactor was one of the best lines ever delivered. The scene where Chris Griffin(voice of Seth Green) as Luke lops off composer Danny Elf-man's head with a lightsaber was a fanboy's wet dream. And I actually liked the coda where Chris and Peter debate which tale was better--Peter's version or the all-Star Wars episode Robot Chicken did just a few short months ago. Yes, that one had Lucas' blessing as well, but somehow Seth Green's crew had enough integrity to be just a bit more brutal than his pal McFarlane.
As a fan, I'm still looking forward to the next episode of Family Guy. As a fan, I can forgive missteps made by a series' writers and hold my head up high as I shrug my shoulders and await their next weekly tale. But as a critic, I feel that if Seth McFarlane was sitting where I am right now and viewing the episode which just aired--through my eyes--he'd be hanging his head in shame.
Official Archives of LanceReviews...
And the point of this was...?
Family Guy revisits a galaxy far, far away...and brings back absolutely nothing new.
"Blue Harvest" is a Star Wars in-joke for reference by true SW fans only. Too bad the rest of the episode's jokes were buried so deeply, not even Indiana Jones could find them.
The episode started off with a great deal of promise...but after this mildly amusing toss-off, it was pretty much all downhill.
I wouldn't be smiling if I were you, Seth...you just let a bunch of your fans down tonight.
