Starring Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Seth Green, Mike Henry, Patrick Warburton, Lori Alan, Adam West, Jennifer Tilly
Written By: Seth MacFarlane, David Zuckerman, Chris Sheridan, Steve Callaghan,
Directed By:
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Buy on Amazon.com link

It’s remarkable that this show is back on the air, and I’m so happy it is. Sadly, The Simpsons have outstayed their welcome and nothing seems to be as funny as Family Guy to me. South Park is still great though, but gets obscure and weird sometimes. When I’m in the mood for some pop culture references and outrageous jokes, I look to Family Guy.

This volume contains 13 episodes that aired from May 2005 til the end of the Summer. I’m kind of surprised to see Fox & co. put these episodes out now and not include them with the next set. But I’ll take whatever Family Guy I can get. This season starts off with Lois and Peter trying to spark romance back into their love life and getting away for the weekend. Along the way, Peter finds a tape for the sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Then Mel Gibson comes after them and they battle it out. While this is happening, Brian & Stewie play parents and try to keep Chris out of trouble. Other storylines this volume are: Chris falling for his substitute teacher, Peter goes blind after eating a shitload of nickels, Loretta cheats on Cleveland with Quagmire, Peter is technically retarded, Brian goes on the Bachelor show and falls for the contestant and lots more! These episodes also contain some of the BEST pop culture references to lots of classic movies, commercials and current events.

I was looking forward to Family Guy coming back on the air for many months after I heard they started up the show again. Which is unheard of in the TV industry, or any industry for that matter. I knew they were going to do the Family Guy movie, but I was surprised to see that Fox brought the series back. Before the premiere of the season, the cast members and writers for the show did live performances of the “To Love and Die in Dixie” episode, which was hilarious! Fans also got a nice treat of seeing the first portion of the premiere episode, North By North Quahog. Seeing an episode with nothing but Family Guy fans was great! But back to the Volume 3 DVD…This season (well May-September) episodes had a lot of funny episodes, but there were a few lackluster ones as well. Well you can’t have every one be outrageously funny, week after week. Even though Family Guy does have some weaker episodes, I still managed to crack up for the references and flashbacks. This season felt like the writers were getting back on their feet, or some episodes were left overs from the previous seasons. But at the same time, they seemed to make things more edgier and smarter.The current season that’s airing now has a lot funnier episodes than these. I’m not saying these episodes are bad at all, in fact; they are freakin’ hysterical! I’ve seen each episode at least 4 times each (thanks to Adult Swim playing them fucking non-stop). I think this season has one of the worse episodes of all the seasons. The episode “Don’t Make Me Over” is such an awful episode because of the bad singing in it. I can’t watch it when it’s on TV again. There are some funny parts to it but for the most part, I just didn’t like that episode at all. There aren’t too many episodes from Family Guy that I think that.

But, I think this volume has some of the best endings of the series. Two of them come to mind. The first is the Star Wars: A New Hope ending in “Blind Ambition.” Peter saves the bartender in a fire at the Clam, and the next scene is the throne scene from Star Wars. It was done in such good timing as well, because Star Wars was opening that weekend. It was done to the T, with Peter laughing at R2, and the nodding to Lois. Just all of it was done perfectly, and it had me bent over with laughter. My second favorite ending of the season was the Raiders of the Lost Ark ending on the last episode, “Jungle Love.” Everybody gets chased by the tribal people, and the family wonders where Meg went to. She’s seen standing on the beach, and then falls dead with a bunch of poisonous darts in her. Ahh gotta love how they stepped it up a notch with picking on Meg. The Simpsons have a Lisa episode, like every other episode and I can’t stand it. I just hate her and makes me hate the show even more now. I’m glad Family Guy acknowledges the fact that Meg sucks and no one likes her. And it’s so funny to see how Peter picks on her too. But she does fight back and that’s funny to see too.

Like with the other Family Guy DVDs, this one contains several audio commentaries on selected episodes. There seems like more commentaries than usual but that might be because there’s only 13 episodes. Seth MacFarlane and crew are hilarious to listen to, because MacFarlane, Seth Green, or Mike Henry start doing their characters in the commentary. Plus James Wood appears on a commentary for the episode he guest starred on. If you have seen the episodes a bunch of times like I have, then listen to the commentaries because they are interesting. Another cool thing about this season is you can watch the episodes uncensored! I didn’t know this until flipping around the DVD menus. It’s for only certain episodes where they actually do curse, so look out for that if you like to hear Brian or Peter cursing. There’s a good featurette on Season 4 and the Family Guy return. You see footage of table reads, voice recording, and lots of the interviews with cast, writers and producers. Worth watching when you are done with the DVD set. There’s a lot a few other extras on here like actual table reads for Blind Ambition and North By North Quahog and a deleted scene with Brian singing. The extras were better than previous DVD sets.

Like I said before, I’m so glad this show is back because life just wasn’t the same without new Family Guy episodes. I just hope Fox doesn’t make the same mistake again and cancel the show for a second time. I think they know what they did and rewarded FG fans will this DVD, the Family Guy movie and other stuff associated with the show. I think they know the show is marketable in some shape or form now, so I don’t see it going anywhere right now. If you like these new episodes, then you’d be foolish not to buy this. It will make for a nice Holiday gift too! Gigitty, Gigitty, Goo!

Features:
Commentaries on selected episodes by Series Creator Seth MacFarlane, Producers, Directors, Writers and Cast Members.
“World Domination: The Family Guy Phenomenon” Featurette
Deleted scene animatics
“Score!” – Music of Family Guy Featurette
Multi-Angle Table Reads
Storyboard/animatic comparison

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1 CC

Video:
Standard 1.33:1 Color

Subtitles:
English, Spanish, French

Favorite Scenes: North By North Quahog, Blind Ambition, Petarded, The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire, Brian the Bachelor, Perfect Castaway
Rating: NR
Running Time: 202 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: