And yes, the Simpsons sucked. I don't know the name of the song but they played it at the end of Ocean's 11.

Its been consistenly funny for all its years, the stories are well written, and the characters very developed and then some!

Its a really good show that makes full used of its 24 mins!

Thanks

Jimbo

Fanboy in me LOVED tonights show.

For all the haters, go ahead and enjoy yourself some Thumb Wars.

The first few seasons of FG are rerunning on regular tv and it makes me miss the time when the show had actual plots and funny cut away jokes instead of just lazy cut away jokes.

The Doctor Who thing made me smile. And then wishing I was watching Doctor Who instead.

So kudos to FAMILY GUY for finally being the first STAR WARS send-up to externalize this rather obvious gag that's been rattling around in the back of my brain for years and somehow, inexplicably, fifty million other STAR WARS parodies have managed to miss.

Oh, and I did like the BLUES BROTHERS "Minnie the Moocher" sneaking reset. That was fucking gold.

Another unexpected highlight was the Rush Limbaugh bit, and if you didn't find it funny, then you're probably too liberal to understand it. It was uniquely Rush, yet perfectly within the SW universe. It was the only reason I even bothered with the show, and to be honest, even THAT wasn't really worth bearing up under the leaden weight of the other 30-40 minutes of drawn-out crap. BTW, I'm not at all surprised about cromwell1666's encounter with El Rushbo. He's a genuinely nice guy and MUCH more humble than he may come off to the occasional listener. Regular listeners can tell when he's engaging in puffery for comedic effect!

Actually, both ROTJ *and* ROTS sucked, but for different reasons. ROTJ was largely a rip of the superior previous two movies, sans any of the fun or pre-existing characterization but with a TOTALLY unbelievable turn by Vader to the light side. ROTS, by contrast, was a fill-in-the-blank transition between the superior previous two films and the original trilogy. I was appalled at how transparently Lucas put each character and circumstance in its proper place to be consistent chronologically with ANH. In somewhat the same manner as ROTJ, ROTS also featured a less-than-well-motivated turn for Anakin/Vader, though it took the character to SUCH a dark place (though off-screen, Vader *did* massacre ALL of the "youngling" children Jedi!) that it made his subsequent turn back to the light yet that much more unbelievable and quite frankly revolting. Dunno 'bout you, but I wouldn't have the mass murderer of children enter ANY version of Heaven of which I could conceive! Regardless, both movies sucked and were TREMENDOUS let-downs after two preceding good movies. Then again, I liked TPM and AOTC, so administer whatever dosage of salt you require. Oh, and those that can't stand King of the Hill? I think I know why. Excuse me, Mike Judge, for exposing what seems to be an open secret of your show, but without peer, it's actually THE most Conservative show on prime-time TV! Think about it: it's about a nuclear family deep in the heart of Texas, and with only a few exceptions that you can chalk up to the innate zaniness of animation, the resolution of each episode is reached through and affirms traditional American family values. There is a moral to pretty much every story and none of them hew to any definably liberal ideologies. No wonder you haters don't get it!

Its about time somebody cut off Danny Elfman's head with a lightsaber...

Oh and Elfman's music all sounds the same and the FG episode demonstrated that perfectly. It's about time someone called him out on being a hack.

There.

Anyone who doubts what a travesty this Family Guy ep was, needs to check out the Robot Chicken Star Wars Special, which 100 times funnier stuff in only 30 minutes. Word.

I still don't think EITHER turn of Anakin/Vader was convincingly portrayed. Realistically, you're asking me to believe that someone who's engaged in a pattern of sociopathic behaviour for TWENTY YEARS is suddenly gonna go all tapioca when confronted with his son? Even if his ultimate goal was to supplant the Emperor, even if the Emperor orders his death at the hands of this son, which I'll allow is more than enough reason to kill the old fucker, how does that translate into renouncing half a lifetime's worth of merciless cruelty, typified by the wholesale slaughter of every Jedi he came across, including his old master, the man who trained him as a Jedi, raised him into adulthood and fought beside him as a friend and trusted ally? The boy may have changed his name mid-stream, but turning what appears to be his very *nature* on a dime like that? For the SECOND time? You're asking too much of me as a sensible, thoughtful and logical man to have me swallow that load o' crap! Or rather, Lucas is. There's still a lot to love in the Star Wars universe, but much as with the last twenty years of the Star Trek franchise, you either have to be picky about what you choose to accept in it, or start doing some really high quality drugs so as to let these deeply implausible bits go by without mangling your cerebrum!

In agreement with you on Elfman, the Batman soundtracks, and the Robot Chicken special (far more inventive and funny). Later.

But even if you lay aside everything in the prequel trilogy, how DO you plausibly take this icon of evil and believably turn him around when you've just spent the last two movies emphasizing that he's REALLY REALLY evil? Seriously, do you really buy it? Not only does Vader sponsor evil on a grand scale, the second time we see the MFer he's holding a guy off the ground by his neck to extract information from him, and then he kills him with one hand! And it's not as if he spares the folks working WITH him, either. THIS is a guy who's redeemable enough to join Obi-Wan and Yoda in the Star Wars version of the afterlife?!? Maybe you're just a more forgiving fella than I am, or I've got more old-fashioned ideas about good and evil, but that don't sit right with me.

And while I realize we're dealing with archetypical characters and stories here, I don't see how either that or working in any flavor of speculative fiction excuses what to my mind is embarrassingly sloppy writing. Lucas may be writing about cultures, people and circumstances far and away from what we know, but we're still the folks who've got to be sufficiently motivated by the quality of his work that we'll pay him for it, thus it has to be relatable to us on some level. This bit, not so much for me. I grant that I'm in a tiny minority in that, but geez, as if that's a new and different circumstance in my life! ;) Thing is, even if it's purely escapist entertainment like the Star Wars or Star Trek or even the Matrix franchises, I'm still bringing some fairly well honed faculties to the party, so if I like a given entertainment I tend to think about it a lot, and I prefer that it stand up to such thought instead of occasionally waving its hands and saying, "Hey, look over there! Isn't that a cool explosion?!" But, hey, that's just me and my profound level of geekiness over here. Pay me no mind.