Road to…The Best Set of Family Guy Episodes
The adult animation industry is now one of the most rapidly expanding genres on television. According to a segment from the Adult Animation White Papers, this current era of television can be considered “The Great Adult Animation Boom” (70). One of the largest adult animation champions, which has been running for 24 years now, is the critically acclaimed animated sitcom Family Guy. The show satirizes relevant pop culture and media while filling in the gaps with wacky plotlines and gags, and often includes adding a unique spin on already existing stories. One of the longest running adaptations Family Guy has adopted into semi-regular usage is the “Road to…” series by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. TVTropes’
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Fans also tend to find new shows by following genre designations. Shows tend to follow one or two overarching genres, typically falling into subgenres as their stories progress and the writing develops into a unique voice and style. Family Guy is known as an adult-animated sitcom due to their adult-oriented humor, situational comedy-based plotlines, and their animated format. The audience watches the dysfunctional Griffin family as they go through their daily life, often with a wide range of issues ranging from typical family problems to wild sexual or drug fueled situations no one would find themselves in. The show relies heavily on their roots for storytelling. In the “Road to…” episodes, the series adopts the original “Road to…” series’s distinctive genre classification: the buddy genre. This combination adventure/comedy sub genre features two people bonding while on a shared journey, with their personalities causing much of the conflict along the way (TVTropes Buddy). Family Guy used the pre-existing best frenemy dynamic of Brian and Stewie to represent the dual protagonists. Their personalities naturally bounce off each other, with both often switching the roles of “straight man” and “comic” often (Fanon). The two then had to endure multiple action-packed scenes in their stories, such as the getaway scene in “Road to Rhode Island” where Brian and Stewie hotwire a car in the hotel parking lot to make a quick getaway after skipping out on room payment. The two also experience another grand theft auto and shootout situation getting home at the end of “Road to Rupert.” Overall, the combination of the animated adult sitcom and the adventure/comedy-based buddy genre is a smooth one, as both genres allow for multiple potential story aspects and character relationship