3 episodes of Family Guy written by series creator Seth MacFarlane

A common misconception among casual Family Guy fans is that creator Seth MacFarlane is personally responsible for every creative decision. Although he voices many characters, his presence in the writers’ room is much lighter than you might think. In an interview, he mentioned that he hadn’t written for Family Guy since around 2009, and even before that he had only officially scripted three episodes. That’s right: only three episodes of the show’s 400+ episodes were written by MacFarlane.

Of course, as any long-running sitcom writer will tell you, the writing for these shows is very collaborative. There will often be one writer who gets credit for an episode, but the script usually goes through several revisions from the rest of the staff. I know from interviewing the writers of Rick and Morty and Futurama that it’s often difficult for the staff to keep track of who wrote which joke and who exactly came up with each individual idea. (When it comes to the show worst episodesthis ambiguity is probably a relief.)

To say that Seth MacFarlane only wrote three episodes would likely understate his creative contribution to the series; however, the fact remains that he only received primary writing credit for three episodes: “Death Has a Shadow,” “Family Guy Viewer Mail #1,” and “North by North Quahog.” So how were they?

Seth MacFarlane wrote the first episode of Family Guy, and he pretty effectively set the tone for its pre-cancellation run. Sure, there’s a lot of early series angst that would later be ironed out — Meg is a completely different character here, even if you factor in the voice actor change, and most of Peter’s friends will be out — but for the most part, it feels like a typical early-season episode.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Death Has a Shadow is the way it casually differentiates itself from The Simpsons even if it is clearly inspired by him. In the first few minutes, the pilot introduces an angry wise-talking kid and a wise-talking dog, and a somewhat edgy cut format, and just waits for the audience to tune in. This is the type of confidence that divides the Futurama pilot of the same yearwhere you see the writers learning from that clunky first season of The Simpsons and trying their best to hit the ground running.

Although the pilot is a favorite episode of Family Guy, it is probably one of the most memorable episodes of the series, mainly because Family Guy would return in the 2011 episode Back to the Pilot “, offering fans an interesting reflection on how much the series (and the world) has changed since the first episode aired. “Death Has a Shadow” isn’t the best episode McFarlane has written, but it’s hardly a bad start to the show.

Although Family Guy will never have an annual anthology tradition like The Simpsons has Episodes house of horrors on a treethis Season 3 episode was one of their first attempts at something like that, and it worked out really well. The first story is about Peter getting three wishes from a genie and dealing with them with all the wisdom we know he’s capable of; the second is about the family getting superpowers and running amok with them; the third is an adorable Little Rascals homage where we get to see the grown-up Family Guy characters when they were chubby kids.

No segment could top it, and the show would continue to do the occasional anthology episode for the rest of its run. I don’t think anything here lives up to Three Kings Season 7, which uses its three-in-one format to give us Stephen King parodies of Misery, Stand By Me, and The Shawshank Redemption. “, but I’m not sure this episode would have even happened if Viewer Mail #1 hadn’t been so well received in the first place.

In addition to the hilarious parody Alfred Hitchcock’s best film, The Season 4 premiere also featured perhaps the series’ best dig at the Fox network. After the show went almost four years off the air, “North of the North Quahog” opens with Peter walking into the house and announcing that they are canceled. When Lois asks if there’s any hope that Fox will change its mind and bring them back to TV, Peter says:

“We just have to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for great shows like ‘Dark Angel,’ ‘Titus,’ ‘Unheralded,’ ‘Beayvik,’ ‘That 80s Show,’ ‘The Miracles,’ ‘The Fast.’ . Lane’, ‘Andy Richter Controls the Universe’, ‘Skin’, ‘Girls Club’, ‘Cracking Up’, ‘The Pits’, Firefly, Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda on the Loose, Costello, Lone Gunmen, A Minute with Stan Hooper , Normal Ohio , Pasadena , Harsh Realm , Keen Eddy , The Street , American Embassy , Cedric The Entertainer’, ‘The Tick’, ‘Louie’ and ‘Greg the Bunny’.

The joke is that all these shows were quickly cancelled; the early 2000s was a time when Fox executives made a series of terrible decisions, and apparently Seth MacFarlane really wanted to make sure everyone knew how inept they were. Just like Futurama years later“Family Guy” had the last laugh.

Outside of the opening, the episode takes a cue from Death Has a Shadow and proceeds as usual; Peter gets involved in some silly shenanigans in the A-plot, while Brian and Stewie try to babysit Chris and Meg in the B-plot. It’s interesting how much the definition of a “regular episode” has changed since 1999; by Season 4, Family Guy established how well Brian and Stewie work together as a comedic duo. (Back in Season 1, they were more likely to pair Brian with Peter while Stewie would be busy killing Lois again.) MacFarlane got to write two different pilots for “Family Guy,” and they both did a lot to establish new norms of the series.