>In conversation with Puck podcast host Matt Belloni, the “Family Guy” creator’s interview came just a week after the premiere of “South Park” Season 27, which virally skewered President Donald Trump with down-to-the-day accuracy.
>“I would never trade our animation team for anything on ‘Family Guy,’ but their production cycle of, what is it, like, two weeks?” he said. “It’s kind of amazing.”
>MacFarlane then highlighted some of the production differences between the two series, particularly in terms of their timeline.
>“It’s pretty incredible that it’s — yeah, any show that lasts that long is pretty astounding,” he continued. “Our shows take about 10 months to a year to produce each episode, so we have to really kind of guess what the world is going to look like, which obviously gets harder and harder.”
>The feud between the two shows began in earnest back in 2006 when an episode of “South Park” – called “Cartoon Wars” – depicted the writers of “Family Guy” as manatees who just select random beach balls with ideas written on them for how the show breaks a story. “Family Guy” fired back in the 2009 episode “Spies Reminiscent of Us” that featured Peter and Quagmire at an improv show where Peter’s decidedly “Family Guy” humor was a success with the audience while Quagmire’s more “South Park”-esque jokes got middling laughs.
“Seth MacFarlane desperately trying to get press for his new show.”
The enemy of my enemy
[deleted]
It’s pretty big of MacFarlane to compliment South Park’s production cycle while their creators have been trashing his show for years. The feud has always been weird because it’s so one sided. Parker and Stone openly hate Family Guy and made whole episodes about it, while Seth mostly just shrugs and says “their critique was funny.”
Different styles for different audiences. Family Guy’s random cutaways vs South Park’s more story driven satire. I’m just glad both shows still exist in 2025 when half the comedies from that era got cancelled long ago. Honestly, this might be the most diplomatic Seth has ever been about the whole thing.
It’s not exactly hard to be the bigger man when the other guys are still bitter over losing to Phil Collins a quarter of a century ago.
“Little story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yeah, talking about that three years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative?
Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, no, you deserve some time off.”
The funny thing is I always team South Park until around 2016. Or maybe it was after manbearpig. Either way, their “caring is for losers” schtick started to wear on me as it became very clear not caring was going to lead to disaster (which it has). And lately I’ve been giving Family Guy and The Orville a go, and it’s dawned on me that Family Guy/MacFarlane was right all along. Family Guy was shitting on the cretins in the Bush White House 20 years ago for the stupidity of the Iraq war, and the Orville has been tackling human rights since its inception in 2017 or so (including entire episodes in support of trans rights), while South Park has mostly stuck with the tedious “both sides are bad”/“we’re above these petty quarrels” crap that was really smug and condescending in hindsight.
Anyway, glad to see Stone and Parker are taking a side and making complicit actors like Paramount suffer for it. MacFarlane showed you can do offensive jokes while also having moral clarity.
I thought it was the best episode of South Park in a long time because it reminded me of the old South Park. Family Guy is the same year after year for better or worse.
Was more of a one sided feud really
I think it’s friendly or pretend rivalry like The Beatles and Stones in the 60s, but if something like this ends a decades long rivalry there is hope.
Could you imagine family guy hitting it as far out of the park as South Park?
McFarlane despises everyone. Ergo, the success of his show. One of the episodes floats a list of the people he hates. Kudos for hating Stephan (not Steven) Dorff (with 2 ff’s not 1 cuz that’ll be a difference-maker) twice.
South Park had 7 funny episodes. The other 800 are absolute copies of each other. Same 5 gags repeated endlessly.
“Our shows take about 10 months to a year to produce each episode, so we have to really kind of guess what the world is going to look like, which obviously gets harder and harder.”
Why TF does it take a year to produce one episode of family guy?
14 comments
>In conversation with Puck podcast host Matt Belloni, the “Family Guy” creator’s interview came just a week after the premiere of “South Park” Season 27, which virally skewered President Donald Trump with down-to-the-day accuracy.
>“I would never trade our animation team for anything on ‘Family Guy,’ but their production cycle of, what is it, like, two weeks?” he said. “It’s kind of amazing.”
>MacFarlane then highlighted some of the production differences between the two series, particularly in terms of their timeline.
>“It’s pretty incredible that it’s — yeah, any show that lasts that long is pretty astounding,” he continued. “Our shows take about 10 months to a year to produce each episode, so we have to really kind of guess what the world is going to look like, which obviously gets harder and harder.”
>The feud between the two shows began in earnest back in 2006 when an episode of “South Park” – called “Cartoon Wars” – depicted the writers of “Family Guy” as manatees who just select random beach balls with ideas written on them for how the show breaks a story. “Family Guy” fired back in the 2009 episode “Spies Reminiscent of Us” that featured Peter and Quagmire at an improv show where Peter’s decidedly “Family Guy” humor was a success with the audience while Quagmire’s more “South Park”-esque jokes got middling laughs.
“Seth MacFarlane desperately trying to get press for his new show.”
The enemy of my enemy
[deleted]
It’s pretty big of MacFarlane to compliment South Park’s production cycle while their creators have been trashing his show for years. The feud has always been weird because it’s so one sided. Parker and Stone openly hate Family Guy and made whole episodes about it, while Seth mostly just shrugs and says “their critique was funny.”
Different styles for different audiences. Family Guy’s random cutaways vs South Park’s more story driven satire. I’m just glad both shows still exist in 2025 when half the comedies from that era got cancelled long ago. Honestly, this might be the most diplomatic Seth has ever been about the whole thing.
It’s not exactly hard to be the bigger man when the other guys are still bitter over losing to Phil Collins a quarter of a century ago.
“Little story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yeah, talking about that three years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative?
Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, no, you deserve some time off.”
The funny thing is I always team South Park until around 2016. Or maybe it was after manbearpig. Either way, their “caring is for losers” schtick started to wear on me as it became very clear not caring was going to lead to disaster (which it has). And lately I’ve been giving Family Guy and The Orville a go, and it’s dawned on me that Family Guy/MacFarlane was right all along. Family Guy was shitting on the cretins in the Bush White House 20 years ago for the stupidity of the Iraq war, and the Orville has been tackling human rights since its inception in 2017 or so (including entire episodes in support of trans rights), while South Park has mostly stuck with the tedious “both sides are bad”/“we’re above these petty quarrels” crap that was really smug and condescending in hindsight.
Anyway, glad to see Stone and Parker are taking a side and making complicit actors like Paramount suffer for it. MacFarlane showed you can do offensive jokes while also having moral clarity.
I thought it was the best episode of South Park in a long time because it reminded me of the old South Park. Family Guy is the same year after year for better or worse.
Was more of a one sided feud really
I think it’s friendly or pretend rivalry like The Beatles and Stones in the 60s, but if something like this ends a decades long rivalry there is hope.
Could you imagine family guy hitting it as far out of the park as South Park?
McFarlane despises everyone. Ergo, the success of his show. One of the episodes floats a list of the people he hates. Kudos for hating Stephan (not Steven) Dorff (with 2 ff’s not 1 cuz that’ll be a difference-maker) twice.
South Park had 7 funny episodes. The other 800 are absolute copies of each other. Same 5 gags repeated endlessly.
“Our shows take about 10 months to a year to produce each episode, so we have to really kind of guess what the world is going to look like, which obviously gets harder and harder.”
Why TF does it take a year to produce one episode of family guy?
It doesn’t even take a year to make a movie
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