Family Guy Live @ Town Hall, NYC
Live Reviews | Apr 30th, 2005
Date: April 30th 2005
Venue: Town Hall, NYC
Another freakin’ sweet concert in April for me. Matt and I found out how to get tickets for Family Guy Live before they went on sale to the general public. Yeah it helps to bookmark Family Guy fan sites! The concert was going to take place before the season premiere of the uncanceled show. The whole cast was going to read a script in front of the audience, and act out a class episode. Plus we would get to hear a track from the new Family Guy Live in Vegas album. Also, we would get a sneak peek at the new episode and do a Q&A session with the cast.
After I woke up from my weekend nap around 5:30pm or so, I was relaxing and slowly getting ready to go to the show. Matt kept saying the show started at 8pm all week so I didn’t bother to look at the tickets til it was almost time to go. At 6pm, I went to go look at the tickets and it said 7pm! It takes over an hour to get to Manhattan and there was shitty weather out too. We busted our asses to get down to the GW Bridge by 7pm, and thankfully there was no traffic on the bridge or on the west side highway. We parked the car, and sprinted up a block, over a block, ran thru time square and up another long block in the rain to get the Town Hall at 7:30pm. I think I cut some slow ass woman on the phone on the sidewalks but I didn’t give a fuck. She called me an asshole and but I think I’ll call her a twat here. Haha. Anyway, we finally got inside the club, a half hour late from the ticket show time.
As we walked in, the cast was on the stage and the place was sold out. There were TV cameras and a big screen in the back of the cast members. There were cardboard cutouts of all the Family Guy characters around the cast. The episode they were reading from was the Down in Dixie episode, which is probably my favorite episode from the show. Thankfully we only missed about 10 minutes of the show . So we were in pretty good shape and very lucky we didn’t miss more. Tickets were a little bit pricey but still worth it. Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Mila Kunis, Seth Green, Mike Henry and 3 other people at the end made up the cast on the stage. They were all having a good time, drinking beer and doing what they do. Seth MacFarlane seems really shy, but when he does the impressions of Stewie, he makes the funniest faces. He really acts out the part when he voices the Rex Harrison inspired voice. For those who don’t know, Seth MacFarlane is the creator of the show and about 30 years old or so. He voices about 50 percent of the characters on the show like Stewie, Peter, Brian, Tom Tucker and Quagmire. Plus he animated the entire pilot in his parent’s kitchen, or that’s what I read anyway. Brian is his normal voice, and he seems to have his personality as well. Seth Green seemed to be having a blast on stage and making shit up as he went along, like pretending to give Alex Borstein a kiss on the jumbo split screen behind them. Then he made Alex give head to the microphone . Mike Henry was funny as well and improvising with his characters that he does. Which is Cleveland, and the creepy old guy Hebert. “Where’s the paperboy?” The cast went thru their lines and made the audience still crack up even though we all have seen the episodes fifty times each.
After they did the table read, Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein went up front and sang a song as Peter and Lois. It was funny and sweet at the same time. I need to get that album, it seems funny. After the singing, they treated us to the first act of the new episode! The audience and I were howling with laughter because the episode was hysterical. Many of you have probably seen since it aired Sunday and I’m just so freakin’ happy this show is back on the air. I’ve been waiting for this show to return for over a year now. The Simpsons just isn’t cutting it anymore and frankly, has been sucking wind for awhile now. I just hope it stays in one time slot and people watch it. It seems more popular than ever now since it’s got such a cult following.
The last thing for the show was a Questions and Answers session with the cast. Seth MacFarlane ended up answering most of them, but Seth Green was asked a bunch too. Seth Green told a funny story about how he got on the show and how he developed Chris’ voice. It was pretty much a bet between his friend (the kid from Dick Tracy) that the next audition he did, he would do Ted Levine’s voice. Well he did Ted Levine’s voice and got the job. You can tell in the earlier episodes that Chris’ voice sounds like Ted Levine’s a little. There were a lot of weirdos asking questions and made me embarrassed or felt awkward hearing them. I wonder how the cast members felt haha.
I’m glad I spent the money to see Family Guy Live, I just wished it was a little longer. Maybe it felt longer to other people since I was late to the show. Remember to catch new episodes of Family Guy on Sundays at 9pm.
