Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Black Sheep ♥ Family Guy!

Yes, Black Sheep loves Family Guy. Black Sheep also loves free stuff. So when the good folks at 20th Century Fox offered to give Black Sheep a free copy of season six on DVD, Black Sheep thought ... sweet!

Now, I know I don't ordinarily talk about TV shows but as I've already established, there was free stuff involved, so I will be looking the other way this time. Family Guy's sixth season is now available to own on DVD. Family Guy, as you likely already know, owes a great deal to DVD as its phenomenal sales for its first couple of seasons led to Fox rescinding their previous cancellation of the show and putting it back on the air. Don't quote me on this but I think that was pretty much unheard of.

The sixth season is a short one. Family Guy was hit early on by the writer's guild strike last winter. Show creator, Seth MacFarlane is one of the main writers for the show and he is also the voice of Peter, Brian and Stewie. So, when the writers went on strike, he didn't wait around to continue recording his voice parts. Subsequently, the sixth season contains only 12 episodes but it makes up for this with tons of extras. There are commentaries galore, a crazy crapload of deleted scenes and plenty of behind the scenes footage surrounding the show's momentous 100th episode, "Stewie Kills Lois". Here is a clip about how the 100th episode came together ...


One of the great special features in the Family Guy season six release, for me anyway, is a featurette showcasing the entire cast's appearance at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival to do the show live. I happened to catch that performance. Now, let me tell you, I usually laugh pretty hard when I'm watching the show at home but I practically peed watching them do the show live. Just to see the vast talent of all the cast members come to life on stage ... it was incredible! MacFarlane going back and forth between Stewie, Brian and Peter is priceless.


The only disappointing thing about this set is that it does not include "The Blue Harvest", the side-splitting Family Guy send-up of the first STAR WARS movie ... the first, first one. Mind you, that one is already available to own separately so I guess I could just go out and buy it ... unless the good people at 20th Century Fox wanna hook me up ... I'm just sayin'.

So get out there and pick up Family Guy season six on DVD today and you too can laugh over and over again at such great classics as "McStroke", where Peter saves a burger restaurant manager from a fire and gets free burgers for life, eats too many in one sitting, has a stroke, is paralyzed on one half of his body, sues the burger restaurant for damages as if it was all their fault and spends most of the episode drooling. It's priceless. I'll leave you with one last clip from the DVD. Enjoy!