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I thought you were a gay lumberjack. =/

I am a gay lumberjack (well, tree planter, but in essence . . .) for the months of May and June. It's seasonal work. I am a gay university student/server for the other 10 months of the year.

The moment you mention foreign reality shows, btw, you no longer are permitted to call yourself a "casual viewer" sorry

I am a casual viewer in the sense that I do not participate in Sucks (or any other online communities) all that much. I've never done anything related to reality TV such as contacting a member of a show, or meeting one of them in person, and I read Sucks a fair amount in my spare time. If that doesn't qualify me as being a casual viewer, it doesn't really matter anyways - its still gonna be an interesting list.

Will there be any game shows on the list? UK shows?

No on both accounts - while game shows were eligible, I just don't think any of them were good enough to make the list. In terms of UK shows, I just haven't seen any.

#24 Family Guy



Family Guy is really comparable to The Apprentice. The Apprentice was huge for a while because it was a pretty funny show with crazy personalities and interesting challenges, but as the show progressed people began to catch on that the prize was to work a middle-end job for a pompous misogynist douche with a really bad comb-over. When Family Guy originally came out, people were comparing it to shows such as The Simpsons and South Park but as time passed it became apparent that although it was really funny, the show simply was not in the same league as the others of its genre.

The show has a pretty interesting history. In 2002 it was unjustifiably canceled for being overtly offensive to Jewish people in its final episode of season 3; now I'm definitely not an antisemitic person or anything (half my extended family is Jewish), but I've seen the episode and I just don't see why they got so worked up about this show. Was it offensive? Yes (to some people). Was it antisemitic? No. Family Guy had been making offensive jokes about other minorities (see Native and African Americans) for three full seasons and no one gave a shit. They made fun of other religions as well (I specifically recall jokes being made about Christianity, Islam and Hinduism and I haven't seen these episodes for about 4 years). No one escaped the Family Guy wrath, but that was really the point. They made fun of everyone and everything in really bold ways. Sometimes they stepped out of line, but the show was designed to straddle the line in the first place.

One reason that I absolutely had to rank this show in the top 25 is that Family Guy came back from the f.ucking DEAD. After its cancellation, the Family Guy DVDs sold so well that it was brought back on the air. People were afraid that they would sell out and become more politically correct, but family guy did just the opposite - they pushed things further than they had in the past. It didn't lose its original sense of humour, and it sure as hell didn't conform to stupid organizations such as the PTC. This was a pretty big deal.

Family Guy suffered another big blow in 2006 in the episode 'Cartoon Wars' of South Park. If you haven't seen it, I recommend that you do, but basically the episode picked apart the Family Guy sense of humour. They pointed out that the family guy jokes almost never relate to the plot and that their jokes could be used at any time through any episode interchangeably. Prior to this episode, people kind of thought of this as a good thing (e.g. Family Guy is so random lol), but South Park highlighted that it is not a very difficult form of humour to write - perhaps it was just me, but the episode definitely changed my perspective on the show.

The show is not dedicated to being a traditional show. Characters are not given nearly as much depth, it doesn't take anything seriously, and the show is choppy because it has a knack for doing the cutaway joke. I think it is for this reason that it doesn't have much longevity - people don't grow attached to the characters or get drawn in by the plot.

But on on the other hand, its type of humour is still really funny and consistent. There are certain characters that absolutely never fail to deliver (see Stewie, Brian and the mayor Adam West), and the cutaway jokes usually get a laugh out of me. It is also great to have playing in the background because you really don't need to be paying attention in order to watch it.

Family Guy gets ranked 24th because while I don't think that Family Guy is on par with most of the other shows on this list, it was never trying to be like them in the first place, and it never fail to make me laugh.