It began with an animated family needing a place to stay and ended with a huge smackdown between two dads – that's how the crossover between "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" played out Sunday on Fox.
There were plenty of inside jokes,
according to Emily Yahr, of the Washington Post. For example, Homer opens up a case of Emmy Awards and starts throwing them at Peter, who yells "I don't have any of those," ("The Simpsons" won 31 Emmys and "Family Guy" hasn't won any).
"The set-up for the crossover: Peter starts drawing a cartoon for the local paper but is run out of town when it takes a misogynistic turn," Yahr wrote. "The Griffins wind up in Springfield, having nowhere else to go when their car gets stolen, and the Simpsons welcome them into their home."
"Peter and Homer bond over donuts and beer but get into an epic fight; Stewie is enamored with Bart; Lisa tries to help Meg find a talent; Chris steals Maggie’s pacifier; and Brian has nothing but disdain for a real dog, Santa's Little Helper," she wrote.
"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane told
Entertainment Weekly, though, that the storyline was secondary to getting the characters together. He said fans of the two shows wanted to see the characters and how they responded in each other's presence.
"It's really about the character interaction," said MacFarlane. "People want to see Peter interact with Homer. They want to see Bart interact with Stewie. In a way, the story in a crossover episode, while it has to be there, is never quite as important as how the characters interact with each other."
"Family Guy" showrunner Rich Appel told the
Wall Street Journal that while some may find the fight between Homer and Peter a bit dark, he felt it was in the keeping of both shows and something that was worthy of both characters.
"Part of what we took from the chicken fight and put it into a Homer fight was purposely animated gruesomely," Appel told the Journal. "But that's part of that tradition on 'Family Guy.' It was something that [creator] Matt [Groening] and [showrunner] Al [Jean] embraced. … It's our own 'Itchy and Scratchy' cartoon."
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