Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at some of the upcoming goodies for all us FAMILY GUY fans out there concerning the next season. I'm a huge, huge FAMILY GUY fan... matter of fact, I just recently picked up Mutant Stewie and Quagmire toys that are sharing places of honor around some new STAR WARS: UNLEASHED toys in my living room. I'm so damn happy to see this series returning, I can't tell you. Apparently, Seth McFarlane has been running around to colleges showing off bits and pieces from this upcoming season and it sounds like the team hasn't lost any steam since they were dropped a couple years ago. Throw into the mix the fact that the entire voice cast is going around doing Live Shows in April (read more about it here!!!) I'm about in a Family Guy frenzy! Enjoy the brief account on McFarlane's appearance at Washington U!

Hey Harry,

Long-time reader, first-time whatever. Just thought I'd drop you guys a line about Seth MacFarlane's Wash U appearance. This guy is freakin' hilarious in person, but we got an added treat by being able to see the first act from the first episode of season 4 ("North by North Quahog" was the name of the episode).

Now, I'm not really the hugest "Family Guy" fan out there. I don't really like any of the episodes outside of season 3. But I have to say, this was really, really funny. The show seems to have really focused on its strengths (comedic timing, Peter's irreverent personality) and left all of its weaknesses behind. The tone was set perfectly by the pre-credit joke, which is Peter telling the family that Fox cancelled them. He rationalizes it by listing about 30 or so shows that Fox needs to make room for, every single one of them cancelled after about 1 season. After that, man, I knew I was in good hands.

The plot of the first episodes appears to concern problems with Lois and Peter's love life, which leads them to take a second honeymoon and leave Brian in charge. It was only the first act, mind you, and this show has a habit of abandoning some plotlines in favor of new ones half way through.

Seth MacFarlane himself was very, very funny. The event was held in a giant, spacious church (crammed to the gills), which is a great irony in and of itself (compounded further by this great "Passion of the Christ" joke from the first episode). He answered all kinds of questions from "what's the deal with 'Wish Upon a Weinstein'" (apparently half the studio was for it and half against, resulting in one executive actually singing the song a capella to the standards and practices guy and asking what was wrong with it) to "how do you respond to criticisims that you steal a lot of jokes from 'The Simpsons'" (To which he half-jokingly responded, "If I'm stealing jokes from The Simpsons, I hope it's not from the later seasons"-- that got a huge laugh) to "what's your most obscure pop-culture reference" (he considers the most obscure, self-indlugent one to be Stewie's singing of "rocket man" just like Shatner-- a gag that has to last a solid minute and a half).

But here's what I'm sure will be most interesting. He dropped some hints about some of this season's episodes: Chris will join the Peace Corps, Brain will go on a reality TV show, and there will be a gay marriage episode dealing with Brian's cousin Jasper (from The Thin White Line episodes). He also gave a few details about the FAMILY GUY MOVIE, which will be direct to video and called "The Family Guy Photo Album." The story will deal with Stewie's quest to find his real father, and he let on that there will be a pretty big revelation in the third act. He also mentioned that there would be two versions-- a PG one and an R one, the latter one recieving his endorsement. He went as far as to say that the R-rated Family Guy Photo Album goes about as far as he wanted to push the show.

If you're going to use this, call me Orson Welles' Fat Flap.

Fo' Shizzle.