Family Guy: Volume Five

Things weren’t quite the same for Family Guy when it pulled off an incredible feat by returning from cancellation. With such lofty expectations concerning its resurrection, it would be extremely difficult to live up to the classic episodes that made the show an underground favourite in the first place. Now with that initial attention fading and the show regaining its stride, it seems Family Guy is starting to show signs of progress, with less of the "like the time when” flashbacks that once seemed to outweigh anything resembling plot. These random gags do tend to make up the majority of Family Guy’s best laughs but sometimes they’re so completely off topic and ridiculous that you wonder why they’re even thrown in at all. Watching the deleted scenes in succession and completely out of context makes you wonder if this show would work better with the same approach as Robot Chicken — nixing a plot in favour of piecing together episodes with random ideas and gags instead of trying to juggle both. Still, much like past seasons, the show’s obscure references to things like The Time Bandits and Nien Nunb are the high points of this series, which even though isn’t as good as it once was is thankfully starting to improve rather than decline. Along with commentaries by creator Seth MacFarlane and various staff on each episode there are also three full episodes in animatic form, which is interesting for a scene or two but there’s no reason to watch full episodes in this format. There’s the usual segment of how to draw a character (this time it’s Peter), as well as a short segment on the Family Guy action figure line, which shows interesting clips of the toys being made but is sadly filled with a mixture of talking heads and scenes from the show rather than the actual figures.