"Family Guy" [McFarlane, 1999] Season 3 [Jul. '01- Nov. '03]

This nihilistic animated comedy has attained legendary status, becoming one of the most ineffably famous shows of the 21st century, and quite easily the most famous animated one (The Simpsons had already begun to fade by then). So the first-time viewer just about has to approach this most crudely drawn of shows with trepidation and lofty expectations. Fortunately, these expectations were in fact met-- and then some. That the people who write for this show (not Seth Macfarlane himself, he's just the creator) should be gay is, as so many people now know, a good thing, because they can observe the world and its individual environments from a distance and engineer them to provide humor in what adds up to be tremendous quantities. This does mean, however, that their vocabulary d/b/a/ that of the show's characters is almost invariably about that of a third-grader. Known for its frequent changes of scene (not really flashbacks per se), there actually aren't that many in this season, in which Family Guy is at its very Family-Guy-est. Grade: A