It’s almost time for the 23rd season of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy to return to its former Sunday night home admidst the 2025 TV schedule. But that hasn’t stopped one of the best TV sitcoms of all time from popping up in the news ahead of time, thanks to one of the animated comedy's most memorable gags-turned-memes from becoming a bit of a topical meme.
Striking while the cultural iron is hot, MacFarlane has revealed what originally inspired “it insists upon itself” as a Family Guy line, and it’s even more amusing knowing it was basically a one-to-one for a real-life moment. And it's all thanks to TikTok users co-opting Peter Griffin’s supposed near-death confession that he didn’t care for The Godfather to make their presumed final confessions before the temporary shutdown.
While that supposed digital extinction event only lasted for about half a day, the moment’s popularity inspired Seth MacFarlane to tell this story about how a film professor from the past helped give us this classic moment:
Featured in the 27th episode of Family Guy Season 4, “Untitled Griffin Family History,” this joke has always provoked a response when it comes to Francis Ford Coppola’s dramatic opus. But this punchline kind of stings a bit more when learning that the true film under attack was 1965’s film adaptation of The Sound of Music.
Although it does bring up the question of whether late actor Christopher Plummer would have agreed. Considering the Canadian actor’s displeasure with the picture is a landmark example of actors admitting they hate there own movie, he may have actually sang this same tune to a certain extent - which kind of adds another layer of laughs.
On the other hand, Seth MacFarlane’s fandom of The Sound of Music cannot be understated. For starters, the Rodgers & Hammerstein song “So Long, Farewell” was used in an early Season 1 gag that sent the Griffin kids to bed. Also, when The Orville’s captain hosted the Oscars in 2013, he used the gag shown below as part of his introduction for none other than Christopher Plummer:
Healthy debate on the modern canon of classics will always be a vital element of talking about the movies. Jokes definitely count in that regard, as Seth MacFarlane has proven with this example of art imitating life, with a subtle switch between the project being debated. It’s punchy, it gets people talking, and it truly is the stuff that memes are made of.
Family Guy Season 23 premieres on Sunday, February 16th on Fox; with Hulu subscription holders being able to stream those new episodes the day after. And if you’ve missed the streaming exclusive holiday specials from late last year, you can prepare for the season proper by catching those episodes at your leisure.
Or if you want to test out whether or not “Untitled Griffin Family History” is one of the funniest Family Guy episodes, you can stream previous seasons in the name of research. And yes, last but not least, you can form your own random thoughts on The Sound of Music, as it too is streaming on this very same platform,
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