Seth MacFarlane Didn’t Appreciate the Venom ‘South Park’ Creators Spewed at ‘Family Guy’
South Park has poked fun at almost everything that’s been a part of pop culture, including Family Guy. But Seth MacFarlane felt the creators of Comedy Central’s flagship show held personal animosity towards MacFarlane’s series.
How Seth MacFarlane felt about ‘South Park’ creators personal hatred towards ‘Family Guy’
The success of Family Guy has shown that the comedy series has amassed a large and growing fanbase during its time on air. But South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn’t find the series as funny as its audience did. The two have gone on record saying that they despise the show.
“We do hate Family Guy. And we totally understand that people love it, and that’s why we put it in the show. We understand that it speaks to some people, and it can just be a simple laugh, and that’s great… and we certainly don’t think it should be taken off the air or anything like that. We just don’t respect it in terms of writing,” the creators once said according to Comedians ‘R’ Go.
The creators expressed their feelings towards MacFarlane’s show through a popular episode of South Park. The “Cartoon Wars” was a two-parter dedicated to Family Guy that the former Oscars host actually enjoyed. But his issue was with Parker and Stone’s intense hatred for Family Guy.
“I thought the South Park episode making fun of us was funny and accurate,” MacFarlane once said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “But what I don’t understand is the personal venom that they spew in the press about the show and about me, where it’s not in the context of a joke. That’s a little baffling.”
Why Seth MacFarlane thought ‘South Park’ creators went too far
MacFarlane didn’t just have issues with the South Park creators’ personal hatred of the show. But he didn’t appreciate the way Parker and Stone disparaged the show’s writing team.
“You know the two-parter they did on us was very funny,” MacFarlane once told Howard Stern. “But then I read this article where they were really just spitting venom at us, and at our staff, and I was like, ‘well that’s kind of lame.’ I was like, ‘go after me all you want but don’t go picking on writers that you don’t even know who are making much less money than you.”
The South Park sequence MacFarlane was most likely referring to was a scene where it was discovered Manatees were in charge of the show. But in real life, Parker and Stone did think that the Family Guy writers were talented.
“I think what makes me disappointed about Family Guy is that it could be an amazing show,” Stone said. “You can tell there are smart people working on it.”
Stone’s partner Parker felt it was a matter of work ethic stopping the show from reaching its potential.
“I don’t think they work hard enough,” Parker quipped. “They need to work harder.”
Seth MacFarlane doesn’t believe in the criticism often aimed at ‘Family Guy’
MacFarlane is used to seeing others critiquing Family Guy for its perceived flaws. Whereas Stone and Parker didn’t enjoy the show’s writing, it’s also been called out for being too crass or inappropriate. But MacFarlane asserted that most of the backlash the show receives is from the internet. And that makes up a very small portion of the series’ global audience.
“The supposed outrage — I don’t find a lot of it in the real world. I read a lot about it on Twitter, which is, as much as we lend credence to it, statistically very fringe,” MacFarlane told The Hollywood Reporter not too long ago. “Most people aren’t on Twitter. But in terms of comedy, I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a single person in the real world — outside social media and outside think pieces — who is really upset about the state of edgy comedy. If anything, I hear about the opposite. People want to laugh.”
