South Park Vs. Family Guy Vs. The Simpsons

So a reader left a perfectly innocuous comment in response to some links from yesterday, saying he thought that I preferred Family Guy to South Park. Not true at all. (As an aside, can I reiterate my request for commenters to leave a name, nickname or pseudonym, any form of identification really, when leaving comments? As I said earlier, we will not enforce any hard and fast rules, so you can continue to be "anonymous" if you so desire, but I do think it serves our small Rs.5 community better if we know who's saying what).

There are a number of reasons I think South Park is easily the best animated show ever produced, and arguably the greatest television show overall. I'm not going to go into all of them at this point but I do think a short-and-sweet comparison is in order.

I think South Park guarantees six or seven laughs every single episode. Not giggles. Not smirks. Not smiles. Not quiet acknowledgments of humor, when you say "Heh...that's hilarious". I'm talking about side-splitting laughter, the kind your neighbors hear if you have thin walls. In that respect, it's probably unlike any other television comedy ever made. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single comedy show that does that. Not The Simpsons. Not Family Guy. Not both of The Offices. Not the first few years of Friends or the middle years of Seinfeld. Nothing. Think about it: how hard do you laugh when watching South Park? At some points, it's incredibly funny even when there's no joke involved - you simply laugh at Cartman's voice, or his relationship with his mother, or the show's tongue-in-cheek mundane treatment of truly ridiculous events (like a teacher having a sexual relationship with a kindergarten student). To a certain extent, this is only possible because of the show's format and place in the world - an animated show on Comedy Central, where anything goes. But it's not as if there aren't other animated shows, or other shows on Comedy Central, and yet they can't seem to come close to replicating the South Park magic.

I do think, therefore, that the show's consistency is something astounding. Every episode in every season for eleven years has been laugh-out-loud funny. But if you're talking about consistency, you can't really ignore The Simpsons can you? It's been on for almost two decades. And it hasn't been able to work in plot lines available to non-animated shows, where characters grow and develop, both physically and emotionally. Think about how many Sopranos episodes were about Meadow discovering something about herself, or going to Columbia, or going through her bratty phase. Think about AJ and his troubles in school and how his character slowly changed toward the last couple of seasons. Entire episodes revolved around these issues. That's something simply not available to the writers/creators of The Simpsons, who have to make do with the same cast, with the exact same characteristics they had in the late 80s. They've essentially written the same story 400 times, except somehow made it different every time and funny (almost) every time. Isn't that worth something?

Of course, the key difference between The Simpsons and South Park (for me anyway) is that by this point, I'm more respectful of The Simpsons than truly excited by it. I don't download any of the episodes and I don't buy the DVDs. If it's on, I'll make sure to watch it, and I'm guaranteed a good half hour, but I'm not truly upset if I go months at a time without watching it. South Park, on the other hand, has a magnetic quality to it - you simply can't go without watching it. That's why I think it's a better show - The Simpsons may be more intelligent and crafty, but South Park is funnier, and that's the point of a comedy show.

What about Family Guy? Truth be told, when it first came out, I loved it. I was especially enamored with Stewie's character, who I thought was the funniest character on any television show that I'd ever seen, funnier than Cartman, George on Seinfeld, Chandler the first few years of Friends, or anyone else. Slowly though, I began to question Family Guy. Not in a born-again-Christian type of way, but in a "hmmm, is this really that funny?" type of way. I asked myself: what does this show offer? What does it bring to the table?

That may have the beginning of the end of my love affair with Family Guy, but what truly brought it to a close were two separate developments. The first of these was the discovery, through YouTube of course, that Family Guy had many of the same jokes/plots as The Simpsons. Call it in an inconvenient coincidence, or call it plagiarism, but it was there for everyone to see. Here's some evidence:



Pretty damning, yes? But that wasn't the worse of it. No, it's when South Park took on Family Guy in the Cartoon Wars that I completely lost my respect for Family Guy. I'll explain why in a minute, but first let me show you the relevant clips.

This background for this first one is that the South Park guys discover that Family Guy employed the image of Muhammad in an episode (this was around the time of the whole Danish cartoon fiasco). This brings the entire town into a frenzy, because they're afraid they'll be a target of a terrorist attack from angry Muslims upset by the whole deal (this particular episode of South Park, by the way, was the most brilliant interpretation of the entire Danish cartoon affair that you could hope to find. If you're interested, and you haven't seen it before, go to comedycentral.com and you can watch it for free by searching for "Cartoon Wars").

Anyway, Kyle and Cartman decide to go to Hollywood to try and get the Family Guy episode pulled, lest Muslims get offended and blow everything up. On the way to Hollywood, the following exchange takes place:



That was merely the first salvo. Cartman's diatribe got me to like Family Guy a little less, but not give up on it completely. No, that happened in the next episode, when Cartman found out who the writers of Family Guy really were. Check it out:



Tell me that isn't the most incisive and cutting criticism of Family Guy you could ever hope to construct. Go on, tell me it isn't. After I saw this episode, I never saw Family Guy the same way again. It was like seeing the hot girl from your high school become fat and covered with chickenpox-type sores. Family Guy became a strictly only-if-nothing-else-is-on type of show for me.

Why did those two clips have such an effect on me? I suspect it's got something to do with the relationship between humor and debate. This is a theory that I've presented to NB before, and he actually agreed with me, which must make it true (only things that are Truly True are agreed upon by myself and NB). Consider this: when you're in a debate or an argument, your guard is up. You want to win. You want to convince the other person you're right, and they're wrong. Your face is in front of your chest, your shoulders point forward, and everything about your body language suggests combat. This in turn has a cyclical effect on your position, which you consider more right than you did before the debate started. Consequently, because you are so entrenched in your position, you are less likely to budge.

Now, consider how humor works. Whether it's a stand-up show or something on television, you're relaxed. You're not expecting a fight, you're expecting to be entertained. You're not in combat mode at all, and so your guard is down. It as this point where comedy is most deadly - when you've been disarmed of your preconceived notions. It's a lot easier to see a differing point of view when you're not forwarding or guarding your own. So when South Park took apart Family Guy, with humor and not anger, it was easy to see they were right.

Another example of humor being powerful in changing preferences was when I saw a DVD of a Bill Bailey stand-up (just an unbelievably funny guy). I was never a huge U2 fan, but I'd listen to a few songs here and there. That changed when I saw this:

It's funny because it's true.