User:Pedro thy master/ Family Guy

Family Guy  is an Emmy-nominated animated television sitcom, created by Seth MacFarlane, that airs on Fox and regularly on other television networks in syndication. The show centers on a dysfunctional family in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island. The show uses frequent "cutaway gags," jokes in the form of tangential vignettes.

Family Guy was canceled in 2000 and again in 2002, but strong DVD sales and the large viewership of reruns on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim convinced Fox to resume the show in 2005. It was the first of only two cancelled shows to be resurrected based on DVD sales.

History
Family Guy was created in 1999 after the Larry shorts (its predecessor) caught the attention of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Its cancellation was announced, but then a shift in power at Fox and outcry from the fans led to a reversal of that decision and the making of a third season, after which it was canceled again. Reruns on Adult Swim drove interest in the show up, and the DVD releases did quite well, selling over 2.2 million copies in one year, which renewed network interest. Family Guy returned to production in 2004, making four more seasons (for a total of seven) and a straight-to-DVD movie, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story. The show celebrated its official 100th episode during its sixth season in autumn of 2007, resulting in the show's syndication. The show is contracted to continue producing episodes until 2012.

Creation
In Family Guy Live in Montreal, Seth MacFarlane stated that he wanted an animated show to impress a girl. Seth MacFarlane wrote the first episode of what would become Family Guy for Cartoon Network's The Cartoon Cartoon Show. Steve, an anthropomorphic dog that would later become Brian is found as a stray by Larry, a fat, idiotic man who would later become Peter and is taken in. In the span of two episodes, many characters that resemble Family Guy characters (for example, a flirtatious pilot that becomes Glenn Quagmire). Due to the target audience of Cartoon Network being children, the Larry shorts were significantly tame in content, relative to Family Guy. Family Guy as we know it today premiered in the United States on the Fox Broadcasting Company on January 31, 1999, after Super Bowl XXXIII.

This episode attracted 22 million viewers. The show premiered as a regular series in April and ran for six additional episodes until the season finale in mid-May. The first season had seven episodes which introduced the show's main characters. The second season began on September 23, 1999, and suffered competition from other shows. After only two episodes of the second season, Family Guy was taken off the network's permanent schedule and shown irregularly thereafter. The show returned in March 2000 to finish airing the second season which contained 21 episodes. The third season contained 21 episodes and began airing from July 11, 2001 to February 14, 2002.

Characters
The show usually revolves around the adventures of Peter Griffin, a bumbling, but well-intentioned, blue-collar worker. Peter is an Irish American Catholic with a prominent Rhode Island/Eastern Massachusetts accent. His wife Lois is a stay-at-home mother and piano teacher, and has a distinct New England accent from being a member of the Pewterschmidt family of wealthy socialites. Peter and Lois have three children: Meg, their teenage daughter, who is frequently the butt of Peter's jokes due to her homeliness and lack of popularity; Chris, their teenage son, who is overweight, unintelligent and, in many respects, a younger version of his father; and Stewie, their diabolical infant son of ambiguous sexual orientation who has adult mannerisms and speaks fluently with what some consider an upper-class affected English accent and stereotypical archvillain phrases. Living with the family is Brian, the family dog, who is highly anthropomorphized, walks on two legs, drinks Martinis, smokes cigarettes, drives a car, and engages in human conversation, though he is still considered a pet in many respects.

Many recurring characters appear alongside the Griffin family. These include the family's colorful neighbors: sex-crazed airline-pilot bachelor Glenn Quagmire; mild-mannered deli owner Cleveland Brown and his wife (ex-wife as of the fourth-season episode "The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire") Loretta Brown with their hyperactive son, Cleveland Jr.; paraplegic police officer Joe Swanson, his wife Bonnie and their baby daughter Susie; paranoid Jewish pharmacist Mort Goldman, his wife Muriel Goldman and their geeky and annoying son Neil; and elderly homosexual ephebophile Herbert. TV news anchors Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons, reporter Tricia Takanawa and Blaccu-Weather meteorologist Ollie Williams also make frequent appearances. The possibly deranged and ethically challenged Mayor Adam West (voiced by and named after the real Adam West) rounds out the recurring cast.

For its first three seasons, Family Guy did not use an especially large cast of recurring minor characters. Since returning from cancellation, many one-shot characters from prior episodes have reappeared in new episodes, although most of the plotlines center on the exploits of the Griffin family.

Settings
The majority of events on the show take place in Quahog, Rhode Island, a fictional outer suburb of Providence Seth MacFarlane, the show's creator, resided in Providence when he was a student at Rhode Island School of Design, and leaves unequivocal Rhode Island landmarks from which one may infer intended real-world locations for events. MacFarlane also often borrows the names of Rhode Island locations and icons such as Pawtucket and Buddy Cianci for use in the show. MacFarlane, in an interview with local WNAC Fox 64 News, has stated that the town is modeled after Cranston, Rhode Island.

Cast
The main cast and their main parts are as follows:


 * Seth MacFarlane: Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, Glenn Quagmire and additional voices
 * Alex Borstein: Lois Griffin and additional voices
 * Seth Green: Chris Griffin and additional voices
 * Mila Kunis: Meg Griffin
 * Mike Henry: Cleveland Brown, Herbert and additional voices

The main cast do voices for several recurring characters other than those listed, as well as impersonate celebrities and pop-culture icons.

Recurring cast members include: Patrick Warburton as Joe Swanson; Adam West as the mayor Adam West; Jennifer Tilly as Bonnie Swanson; John G. Brennan as Mort Goldman; Carlos Alazraqui as Jonathan Weed (until the character was killed off in season three); Adam Carolla as Death (excluding Death's first appearance, during which the character was voiced by Norm Macdonald); Lori Alan as Diane Simmons; and Tara Strong as many additional voices, most notably Meg's singing voice.

Lacey Chabert voiced Meg Griffin for the first production season (15 episodes); however, because of a contractual agreement, she was never credited. She was eventually credited at the end of The Family Guy 100th Episode Special, which featured clips of her voice work on the show.