Season 10 of South Park was released on DVD Tuesday, and so I’d like to borrow the title of a two-part episode that season and talk to you about the Cartoon Wars. When people talk about TV cartoons nowadays, the discussion tends to focus on the “big three:” South Park, The Simpsons and Family Guy. I personally feel that King of the Hill is also of extremely high quality, but for one reason or another discussion usually excludes it in favor of the other three, and so that’s the tack I’ll take today. In the South Park episodes in question, Cartman takes it upon himself to use a controversial image of Mohammed on Family Guy to get not just that episode but the entire series taken off the air. He can’t stand Family Guy, you see, and when Kyle suggests that Cartman should like it, Cartman vows to kill him where he stands.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone admit that the negative attitude about Family Guy portrayed in the show is a similar one to their own, albeit highly exaggerated. They don’t like Family Guy. Their two part episode “Cartoon Wars” repeatedly makes reference to the fact that the style of joke seen on Family Guy is completely irrelevant, unrelated to the nature of the characters, the situations, or the plot proper, and that this makes for a poorly-written, inferior kind of show. As a long-time fan of The Simpsons, I’ve listened over and over to all the episode commentaries yet available, and it’s clear from those that much of the creative staff of that show feels that Family Guy is a second-rate show as well. I say that, while it’s true that the jokes are usually just pure gags, with no connection to what’s going on in any individual episode, this does not make a less quality show.

That’s nonsense — Family Guy is perfectly fine.

Family Guy has never made any pretenses about the kind of show it is. We don’t watch it because we care about what particular adventure will transpire this week, as we do with South Park. We’re not interested in the deeper aspects of the characters relationships with one another the way we used to be able to do with Simpsons episodes like “Colonel Homer.” All we want is to see encapsulized jokes, a rapid fire succession of gags. We’re not worried that the jokes don’t connect to a story; when someone just tells you a joke, they needn’t relate it to a twenty-minute story for you to enjoy it. A joke can be funny all on its own, and Family Guy knows this and acts on it. The show has always announced up front that it’s basically just a collection of gags.

It’s that honesty that makes it okay for Family Guy to be the way it is. We can have one show like that. With most shows, I expect the kind of stories and characters that have made South Park and classic-era Simpsons episodes so successful. Those two shows are well written, with an innovative story each week that’s often loaded with political or social relevance. Because we have shows like that, there is room for a show like Family Guy. For one half hour a week, we can just sit back and wallow in the one-level jokes, and we can enjoy it as long as the jokes stay funny. The jokes on Family Guy are indeed funny, and so the show works.

When we need jokes more based in the stories and established character traits, we can turn to these other programs. If South Park or The Simpsons became like Family Guy, then it would be time for complaint. When a show that’s proven itself to have relevance and quality writing does nothing but provide discombobulated random comedy, that’s a disappointing slip. From Family Guy, though, that’s all we’ve ever wanted and so that’s what we get.

There are innumerable moments from all three of these shows that make me laugh aloud no matter how many times I see them. They all work at what they do, all for different reasons. The fact that I can’t remember what particular episode a Family Guy joke comes from doesn’t make me enjoy the joke any less. The other shows have memorable episodes, Family Guy has memorable jokes, and both are just fine with me.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• TV Comedy Has No Excuse
• Give The Simpsons Its Due
• The Simpsons Movie
• South Park’s ‘Smug Alert’: It Takes One to Know One
• Bender’s Big Score