Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy is often compared to The Simpsons, and those comparisons are pretty apt. From the hard-drinking blue-collar dad to the bored housewife to the annoying next-door neighbor to the homicidal baby, Family Guy borrowed a lot from Matt Groening’s iconic series. Both shows have acknowledged the similarities in a number of gags.
Like The Simpsons’ Springfield setting full of wacky personalities, MacFarlane populated Family Guy’s small-town setting of Quahog with supporting characters who could provide cutaways and B-plots. Some of these characters are hilarious, occasionally stealing the spotlight from the Griffin family, while others have been disappointing.
9 Best: Mayor Adam West
Rather than copying The Simpsons and making Quahog’s mayor a spoof of a real-life politician, the elected official in charge of the Rhode Island town where Family Guy takes place is Batman actor Adam West, playing a ridiculous version of himself.
Quahog recently elected a new mayor in the form of Sam Elliott following West’s untimely passing. But as great as Elliott is, no one will be able to properly replace West.
8 Worst: Conway Twitty
Conway Twitty isn’t necessarily a character in Family Guy, as he only ever appears in old recordings of live performances whenever the writers don’t know how to segue out of a scene. Sometimes, a Twitty cutaway is left to play for so long that viewers forget they’re watching Family Guy.
Apparently, the writers think it’s funny to waste precious airtime on a major network with banal country music, but they’re also wasting their loyal fans’ time with this stuff.
7 Best: Cleveland Brown
It’s been nice to see Cleveland back to normal since returning to Family Guy. When he got his own relatively short-lived spin-off, the writers turned him into a Peter Griffin clone. What made him work so well in Family Guy was being a softly spoken straight man to contrast with Peter’s shenanigans.
His slow, mostly monotonous manner of speaking makes every line delivery hysterically deadpan, while the running gag with his bathtub ranks among the show’s best.
6 Worst: Glenn Quagmire
Almost every joke involving Glenn Quagmire has something to do with sexual assault. He constantly preys upon vulnerable women and faces no real repercussions for it. What’s worse is that the show always seems to be on Quagmire’s side.
Ever since he was revealed to be 60 years old, balding, and a huge cat lover, Quagmire has been the source of some great gags that aren’t about his disturbing sexual crimes, but not enough to make up for years of indulging rape culture.
5 Best: Joe Swanson
Although he was introduced as a badass cop in the first season, Joe Swanson has devolved into a punching bag over the years. The mockery of Joe is rivaled only by the incessant bullying faced by Meg.
Patrick Warburton’s unmistakable deep voice and impeccable abilities as a voice actor make all of Joe’s lines hilarious, while his storylines have been some of the best in recent seasons.
4 Worst: Consuela
Consuela is a completely one-note character, and a pretty racist one at that. She’s a Hispanic maid whose defining characteristic is that she responds to every question by saying, “No, no...”
When she’s featured in a cutaway gag, it’s the same cutaway gag we’ve seen a million times before, and when she’s featured in a storyline, like when the Griffins hired her, her characterization is stretched razor-thin.
3 Best: Bruce
“Oh, no!” Bruce is an effeminate gay man with a lisp. Like Consuela, Bruce is a one-note character, but unlike Consuela, that note can be played in all kinds of different contexts, like choosing which of his 11 items to put back in the 10-items-or-less line at the grocery store.
Mike Henry has also used his inimitable Bruce voice for absurd parodies of various horror movie villains, such as the shark from Jaws and the xenomorph from Alien.
2 Worst: Seamus
Seamus’ comedic value comes from the fact that all his limbs are wooden. In a sauna, it was revealed that his entire body is made of wood and the only part that’s flesh and bone is his head. This works as a single visual gag, but not as a full-on character.
While copying common stock characters like the local news anchor and the school principal from The Simpsons is forgivable, copying something as out-there as the Sea Captain is pretty egregious.
1 Worst: Ernie The Giant Chicken
In the second-season episode “Da Boom,” Ernie the Giant Chicken gave Peter an expired coupon and Peter engaged the chicken in an epic brawl that took them all the way across town before culminating in a brutal finale that suggested the rivalry wasn’t over. Back then, it was pretty funny.
However, these fights have since taken up five-minute chunks of various episodes and it’s the same thing every single time. This gag got old the second time it was used. All these years later, it’s become insufferable.
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