Family Guy gets real in season premiere.

I love me some Family Guy. Although I feel like it should be required watching if you live in Rhode Island, it's still funny if you don't. I can understand how others might get sick of the show and its somewhat formulaic humor, but hey, what else am I gonna watch? And as Peter Griffin would say, what do you want me to do, read a book? ... you go read a book.

Anyway, last night's episode was another experiment much like the bank vault from last season. There were echoes of both Clue (which I'm a big fan of) and Twelve Little Indians (which I'm also a big fan of) throughout, so not surprisingly, I liked the episode. And unlike a typical show, there were barely any "manatee jokes," as South Park would say. I counted about four in the entire episode.

The premise: All of Quahog is invited to a late night dinner at a mansion at the edge of town. Once there, Family Guy villain James Woods reveals himself, but proclaims to have turned over a new leaf. The guests are skeptical, and the plot thickets as Quagmire's (very, very ugly) date gets killed during dinner, while Woods is out of the room.

I won't spoil the rest of the episode, since I doubt most of you watched it. However, while I liked the first three-fourths of the episode, the final quarter really fell apart for a variety of reasons. The episode itself it still worth watching because of how different it is from a typical Family Guy, but don't expect any sort of magic at the end.

At least Adam West is awesome throughout. And yes, he is heavily featured, along with Carl the Video Store Clerk (H. Jon Benjamin) and the other popular side characters. They definitely have the funniest lines in the episode.

Inexplicable Movie Review: Clue

I touched upon this briefly with my Chevy Chase entry yesterday, and the lovely Sadako from Dibbly Fresh offered some support for my opinion, but I'm a big fan of the movie Clue. Released in 1985 to little fanfare, a surprisingly good cast headlined by Christopher Lloyd (Professor Plum), Martin Mull (Colonel Mustard), Michael McKean (Mr. Green) and Tim Curry (the butler) spices up the proceedings.

The plot of the movie is based vaguely on the popular board game. All the characters and weapons from the game are in the movie, with the additions of a butler, a foxy maid, a cook, a cop, a singing telegram, and the characters' host, Mr. Body. Of course, the game is just a game, so the movie invents the idea that they're all being blackmailed for various misdeeds by Mr. Body.

These misdeeds range from the heinous to the silly and funny. Specifically, Mr. Green is being blackmailed because he's gay, which lends itself well to several 1980s style jokes. The plot itself is very contrived, as seemingly everybody is connected to everyone else like it's a god damn Agatha Christie novel, but the strong work of the actors keeps things fun.

However, a gimmick no doubt killed the film at the box office. See, the creators had the great idea of giving the film three different endings, with only one being the “real” ending. Therefore, to fully experience the film, you'd have to watch it three times. However, the only difference between the broadcasts was the five to 10 minute ending segment, meaning you'd pay three times for 15 to 30 minutes of extra content. (In 1985 dollars, this was about $12, but still, time is money!)

This “special feature” probably hurt the film's take, but it gives Clue an odd, campy sort of replay value. In VHS, DVD and television airings, all three endings are now tacked on at the end and differentiated by cue cards. I first saw the movie on Comedy Central around the turn of the century, when DVDs were still sort of rare. As a result, every time it came on I felt like I was watching something special and different. For similar reasons, I loved when Hulk Hogan broke the fourth wall in Gremlins 2 and shouted at them to resume the movie. (Also, Hulk Hogan is cool, brother!)

The Clue movie picture comes from this pretty good blog about... Only Good Movies. The Hulkster picture is from this blog reviewing American Gladiators.

Hey, Chevy Chase used to be funny!

Insert obvious joke about Chevy's career.

Since he's now been relegated to a minor supporting character on Community, it's easy to forget that Chevy Chase was once funny. Heck, all of his best work - Caddyshack, Fletch, Saturday Night Live - came out either well before or near my birth date in 1984. (I'll wait for some of you to come back from hanging yourselves.)

His demotion isn't exactly undeserved. Even on Community, his character has seemingly been scaled back because he simply isn't as funny as the younger comedians. Because he kind of looks the same, it's easy to forget that he's 66, and that a lot of his former SNL co-stars either work reduced schedules (Bill Murray) or are similarly damaged by drugs (Garrett Morris) or are dead (Belushi). Chase simply surviving to this point, given his immense cocaine problems in the past, is surprising.

However, I recently stumbled across the old Chevy Chase NBC specials on the Internets, and it is amazing how much of a fastball he had then. From 1975 and 1977, there is a dry sort of humor that is well ahead of its time. There is stilted, awkward dialogue, the sort of which Adult Swim and Space Ghost and Archer would use 30 years later, along with traditional sketches. The drug humor is also far toned down from the first season of SNL. (People tend to deify that first season, but for every great Samurai Delicatessen sketch, there is one where everyone is loaded and slurring through their lines.)

I'm guessing the specials are so good because there are only three of them. Heck, even Charlie Murphy was great for two episodes of Chappelle's Show. Without Dave and Neil Brennan editing? Eh, not so much. The specials give a glimpse at Chevy's incredible talents, and it is just a shame so much of it vanished up his nostrils.

On an unrelated note, the specials also have a really, really young and hipster Martin Mull in them. It's hard to imagine him as an actual comedian now, given all of his supporting roles - he has been in 111 freakin' things! I'll always remember him as Col. Mustard from the Clue movie though, which only I seemed to love.