‘Family Guy’ creator Seth MacFarlane continues to deride Tucson
Apr 15, 2014, 6:44 PM | Updated: 9:50 pm
The most recent episode of Fox’s “Family Guy” threw a low blow — literally — at Tucson, Ariz., and according to Tucson Weekly’s Brian J. Pedersen, it’s not the first time the show and its creator, Seth MacFarlane, have made fun of Arizona’s second-largest city.
In the newest episode of the animated series, Lois Griffin worries that her husband, Peter, has become too smart by visiting cities like New York and San Francisco. She wanted him to go back to his normal self, so she sends him to Tucson to essentially dumb him down again.
As Peter arrives in what Lois calls “the dumbest city in the whole country,” somebody punches him in the groin, and then the scene pans to a bunch of other Tucsonans — all with teeth missing — who are injuring each other in the same manner.
You can see the clip here.
The trip apparently worked, as Peter came home as his old dumb self, declaring that while in Tucson he’d seen a wet T-shirt contest using chocolate milk at the Tucson Philharmonic. Oh, and that Battleship was still in theaters here.
(Stupid writers: we don’t have a philharmonic)
This is at least the fourth jab at Tucson in the past two years on either “Family Guy” or another Seth MacFarlane-made show, “American Dad.” Past digs include calling (Tucson) unnecessary, questioning the University of Arizona’s admission standards and a variety of observations about the region while on a helicopter tour.
Pedersen speculates that maybe MacFarlane is bitter because he perhaps tried to shoot part of his upcoming western comedy “A Million Ways to Die in the West” at Old Tucson Studios and wasn’t offered a good enough deal, but he can’t confirm this claim.
The writer also reports that a Yahoo! Answers thread has been created revolving around whether “Family Guy’s” claim of Tucson being the dumbest city is true or not.
