What am I missing?

[babyblob]

I always here people talk about how much like the Simpsons family Guy is and to be honest I just don't see it. What am I missing. Yes Peter and Homer are both drunken idiots but Lois and Marge are very different as are Meg and Lisa. The syle of humor is also not the same. Family Guy is more raunchy and foul. I could never see the Simpsons singing prom night dumpster baby. Family Guy has sex crazed maniacs and pedophiles. So how are the two shows the same? What am I missing?

[90'sCartoonMan]

The set-up of the family is quite similar. Lois and Marge may not have the same personality, but they are both stay at home mothers (because Lois hasn't taught piano in years). There's the dumb, drunken father, two kids (boy and girl), and one baby that's a lot smarter than normal babies.

Then you've got the wider world of Quahog, which uses a lot of the same supporting character archetypes the Simpsons has. An unprofessional news anchor, an incompetent mayor, a sea captain, a doctor, etc. There's even a bar setting with the main character's best guy friends. The crossover episode pointed this out.

Family Guy is more raunchy and foul because it started ten years later, and the Simpsons did some risque stuff too that just seems tamer by today's standards. Family Guy could be seen as just keeping up with the times. Family Guy had a song about a prom night dumpster baby, but The Simpsons had a song about a burlesque house. Family Guy has a pedophile, but in one Simpsons episode, it's a recurring gag that Troy McClure performs sexual acts with fish. Family Guy has lots of violence and Peter often fights a giant chicken, but even before that, Homer attacked the Estonian Dwarf and beat him so badly that the kids looking on thought he was dead.

Then there's the fact that Family Guy has reused many of the same jokes and plots the Simpsons already did. Early Simpsons used a lot of cutaways in the form of imagine spots. The Simpsons is known for its Halloween episodes with three shorter stories, and Family Guy has done episodes in a similar vein using Viewer Mail, Stephen King stories, and an episode making fun of directors. I know there's a handful of examples of plots Simpsons used before Family Guy, but just recently, they did a "Rear Window" parody with Brian, which was something the Simpsons had already done with Bart.