Planet Family Guy

Tonight Family Guy goes head to head with 30 Rock, Entourage, Flight of the Conchords, How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and Weeds in the Emmys for the outstanding comedy award. Family Guy is not the favourite to win, that currently goes to 30 Rock, but anyone of these shows could win tonight. Whether the show wins or not, it has still achieved the incredible feat of getting a nomination; it is the first animated show in this category since The Flinstones were nominated back in 1961! That makes it the second animated show ever to be nominated.

Catch the 61st Primetime Emmy Awards live tonight on CBS from 8pm.

Good luck Family Guy and all who work on the hugely successful show.

The Family Guy Inside the Actors Studio is on Bravo tonight at 7/6C with the main cast of Family Guy, except Mila Kunis for some reason. The show’s host James Lipton has said of tonight’s edition: “I recommend seatbelts in your armchairs as the creator and cast of Family Guy assemble on our stage for a hilarious, irreverent look at themselves, each other, their characters and their spectacularly successful show. This is, quite simply, unlike any Inside the Actors Studio you’ve ever seen.”

Sneak peeks of the upcoming Season Premiere episodes of “Family Guy”, “American Dad”, and “The Cleveland Show” are available free of charge on Apple’s iTunes.

The Family Guy peek is from ‘Road to the Multiverse’ and the American Dad clip is from ‘In Country…Club’. Each of these sneak peeks is about two minutes long. The clip of The Cleveland Show is from the pilot episode, and shows Cleveland meeting his bear neighbors.

Spoiler alert
In the Family Guy preview, Brian and Stewie, who is on a leash, are on the porch of the Griffin home discussing which names they are going to use when introducing themselves to the Griffin Family. (Remember this episode has them traveling the “multiverse”.)

Brian rings the doorbell and Peter, as a dog and dressed in his usual clothes, runs excitedly to the front door to answer it. Brian explains to Peter that they are his new neighbors who live down the street and introduces himself as “Blake Carrington” and, to Stewie’s disappointment, Brian introduces Stewie as “Gabe” (and not “Hotchkiss”, or “Axel”, or “Maximillian”, or “Dex”..)

Peter then introduces Blake and Gabe to the other members of his family, who are each their own breed of dog, except for Brian who is the human member of the family. (Personally, Brian as a human reminds me of Leslie Nielsen of “Airplane!”, “Naked Gun” and “Spy Hard”, among other movies -no disrespect intended.)

Stewie as a dog and as Gabe talk to each other about the ‘shuffle button’ in navigating the multiverse. We also see Joe as the ‘human catcher’, who asks Peter if he can borrow some wet food because he and Bonnie are having company over. -Check out the sneak peek if you have access to iTunes!

Fox have released a series of promotional images for their new Animation Domination season that starts at the end of the month of Sunday September 27th. family Guy, American Dad, new series The Cleveland Show, and non-Seth MacFarlane show The Simpsons make up Fox’s Sunday night entertainment.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Steve Callaghan and Mark Hentemann have signed three-year deals with 20th Century Fox and have been promoted to executive producers and named showrunners for “Family Guy”.

The duo is currently overseeing the production of next season’s “Family Guy” (beginning in 2010), which will open with an hourlong whodunit episode in which, in Agatha Christie-style, a variety of regular and ancillary “Family Guy” characters will be locked up together trying to solve murders.

David Goodman and Chris Sheridan will remain on the show as executive producers alongside Callaghan, Hentemann, creator Seth MacFarlane and Danny Smith.

The following is from Variety: Per “Family Guy” tradition, both scribes have clocked screen time voicing various characters. Callaghan has played the Cocoa Puffs bird, Pontius Pilate, the guy on the DirecTV help channel, Stewie’s fast food manager and Prince.

Hentemann, meanwhile, has played Opie — Peter’s brain-damaged co-worker — as well as a studio audience ostrich.

“My niche seems to be either brain damaged or mentally handicapped characters,” he said.

It’s official, Fox will not be airing the abortion episode of Family Guy. They have issued the following statement:-

“Fox will not air the ‘Partial Terms of Endearment’ episode of ‘Family Guy,’ but we fully support the producers’ right to make the episode and distribute it in whatever way they want.”

At the Family Guy panel of this year’s Comic Con event the episode was talked about as a DVD only episode due to Fox feeling jittery about showing it on television.

Of course something similar has happened in the past when the Jewish themed episode When You Wish Upon a Weinstein went unaired for several years. Originally part of the second season, it wasn’t until 3 years after it should have been screened that Adult Swim finally gave it a chance in 2003, followed by Fox a year later. So maybe Partial Terms of Endearment will eventually be shown on Fox (or even Adult Swim).

The season premières of Family Guy season 8 and American Dad season 5 will be on Fox Sunday September 27th. They will be joined by the series première of The Cleveland Show. The Cleveland Show kicks off at 8.30pm followed by Family Guy at 9pm, and American Dad at 9.30pm.

As pointed out by Buckimion below the allocated time for the season première of Family Guy does not appear to allow for the double length Something, Something, Something, Dark Side episode that we were expecting to screen at the start of season 8!

The Futon Critic is now reporting that Fox’s Animation Domination line-up on Sundays during the fall will be disrupted at least once due to baseball. There will be no Family Guy, etc., on November 1st due to World Series Game #4 and possibly the ALCS Game #7 will disrupt Sunday October 25th.

Fox have released details of its 2009/2010 Animation Domination schedule now that the current seasons of Family Guy, American Dad, and the rest are over. Family Guy and American Dad remain in their current slots for the Fall, with The Cleveland Show making its début in the 8.30pm slot before Family Guy.

Midseason, Fox plan on shaking the schedules up a bit with The Cleveland Show taking American Dad‘s 9.30pm slot, which in turn moves to 7.30pm just before The Simpsons. New comedy Sons of Tucson will take over from Cleveland‘s previous slot before Family Guy.

So, here’s what Sunday nights look set to look like from September 2009:-

Sunday nights, Fall 2009

• 8:00pm The Simpsons
• 8:30pm The Cleveland Show (season 1)
• 9:00pm Family Guy (season 8)
• 9:30pm American Dad (season 5)

Sunday nights, midseason 2010

• 7:00pm Animation Domination encore
• 7:30pm American Dad
• 8:00pm The Simpsons
• 8:30pm Sons of Tucson
• 9:00pm Family Guy
• 9:30pm The Cleveland Show

Next Sunday sees the season finales of Family Guy, American Dad, The Simpsons, Sit Down, Shut Up, and King of the Hill on Fox’s Animation Domination; to mark the occasion an animated Eminem and Family Guy‘s Stewie will host the evening throughout the line-up. According to the press release, “fans should tune in for an exclusive surprise MySpace Music announcement they won’t want to miss and visit www.myspace.com/music that evening for additional details.”

“It was a thrill to work with Stewie,” said Eminem. “I’m a big fan of talking babies and their humor.”

On working with Eminem, Stewie said “I was just about to meet him, but after I shook hands with his stylist, his assistant, his lawyer, his bodyguard, his other bodyguard, his photographer, his manager, his hanger-on, his flower girl, his driver, his videographer, his notary, his historian, his her-storian, his texter and his own greased-up deaf guy, I got the swine flu.”

The Family Guy season 7 finale is Peter’s Progress at 9pm in which Peter has his palm read by a psychic who reveals that he had a fascinating past life in the 17th century as Griffin Peterson.

It’s the penultimate episode of Family Guy season 7 tomorrow on Fox, and Fox have released once more a preview clip to promote the episode.