Earlier this week I opened my copy of Rolling Stone’s newest October issue. Full disclosure I have been a reader for many years and a subscriber only in recently. Amidst the controversies that various articles have caused I’ve continued to read because I love music, and I like that I have kept up with this tradition of reading Rolling Stone since my preteen years.
So when I saw the cover, a crowded image of several popular TV show characters, it quickly grabbed my attention and headed straight to the article. Slowly I read through a few, several shows I recognized from having been a viewer, other older shows I recognized by name as well as recent shows that are popular now but don’t currently watch. I finished going through the list and found that one particular ultimately very popular show was missing. My first thought was ‘well not every show can be on this list’. Seriously. There are far too many shows that are too good and that did not make the list. Maybe these particular absent shows are not as mainstream as other shows, did not have a long-run on tv, or maybe those shows were ignored because the people who made this list were being biased AF. The show in question falls more in the latter category.
Family Guy was the show that stood out like a sore thumb as NOT making this list. You might think, well it’s just not good enough for the list. See that’s where you’re wrong because at the end of the article the deciders of the massive list are listed. Many of them Rolling Stone staff as well as 52 creators , writers, producers and actors of the very shows on the list. Yup. Among them actors and show runners that did not make the list, but still doesn’t it seem like a very biased and not a true definition of ‘The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time’?
Perhaps it was a way to throw shade at Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. We cannot dispute that over the years South Park creators have made their dislike for Macfarlane fairly obvious and Rolling Stone magazine even published an interview with MacFarlane in 2012 where he was asked about it. In 2015 Rolling Stone again published an article titled ‘Hating Seth MacFarlane: A Timeline’ where they chronicle his career from the beginning until today as well as the reasons as to why people in the business don’t like him. You know who did make the list? South Park. Why didn’t they have readers involved in choosing the top shows after all we are the majority of viewers.
Recognize talent when you see it. Leave all of those personal issues with MacFarlane behind. So the guy is successful, but he’s got talent that the industry fails to recognize often. His show comes off as rude and inappropriate to a lot of people. So what? All shows will have something somebody will not like. I’m not going to say that I’ve never been insulted from some of the things that come up in Family Guy, but guess what it has created conversation among friends who also watch the show. I continue to watch because it’s funny and real. It motivates the viewers to feel, think, and talk about issues that affect us everyday. So don’t dislike a guy because he’s successful in more ways than one or because he writes about the real issues of today with the cocky honesty that we don’t want to hear but so desperately need to.
Lemmon Avenue 