The Ups and Downs of Life With a Rude, Crude ‘Guy’

Sometimes bad boys get spanked.

And Seth MacFarlane, well, he’s been a very, very bad boy.

Young, bright and gifted with a face that suggests bookish innocence more than mischief-maker, the 26-year-old creator/executive producer of Fox Broadcasting’s rude animated comedy “Family Guy” is sounding a bit penitent as he speaks over the phone about the inflammatory past and shaky future of his show.

Widely loathed by critics and generally ignored by viewers, “Family Guy” first assaulted prime time in January 1999, proceeding to offend everyone from the Kennedy family to MacFarlane’s high school headmaster before landing this summer in what looked like the network’s end-of-season trash heap.

“Family Guy” and its beyond-dysfunctional family, the Griffins, seemed offensive even on Fox. That’s no small task given that the network has historically not only welcomed but relished the tasteless and the tantalizing, from “Married . . . With Children” to “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?”

Using every bit of the latitude animation allows, MacFarlane and company served up a grotesque Rhode Island cartoon family that would give even the Farrelly brothers pause. Dominating the riotous household are Peter, a man who makes Homer Simpson look like Nobel Prize material; Brian, a brainy, booze-swilling hound with a penchant for martinis; and Stewie, a murderous baby boy bent on world domination and the annihilation of his mommy.

All were given voice by none other than MacFarlane. Sometimes too much voice, even (on rare occasion) by MacFarlane’s standards.

“When you’re skirting the line every day, 19 hours a day, because of the nature of the show, you’re going to cross it periodically. There’s no avoiding that.”

Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog--the former Comedy Central chief who bet on “South Park” and won--seemed like the perfect champion for “Family Guy.”

But that’s not how it all worked out.

“Family Guy” suffered the kind of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t time slot shifts that have killed bigger and better shows. It rode in on a choppy flume of cartoons that included such genre-killing series as “The PJs” and “Home Movies.”

And as if being slammed by critics and bounced around the prime-time schedule weren’t enough to kill a show that, for a moment, looked like a hit, MacFarlane also managed to rile up his old headmaster, the Rev. Richardson Schell.

Schell mounted a boycott of the show, citing offensive humor that went way over the line. Then it came out that Schell’s motivations might have been more personal than that, since the Griffin family shares its name (coincidentally, MacFarlane maintains) with Schell’s longtime assistant.

But “Family Guy” isn’t dead yet, despite a recent rant in the New York Observer in which a perturbed MacFarlane took aim at Herzog and Fox’s handling of the show.

Herzog, however, is gone, another victim of the world’s most dangerous job.

And a supportive Gail Berman, former president of Regency Television (which produced Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle”) is in charge.

So MacFarlane is making nice.

“Although nothing I said in that article was a lie,” he says, “on a personal level [Herzog] was a very nice guy. I actually kind of regretted taking a shot at him.”

In the meantime, “Family Guy” has been burning off original episodes in yet another hard-to-follow pattern of broadcasts--although with somewhat brighter results in the ratings.

With no place on the fall schedule and production effectively shut down, many, including MacFarlane, assumed that the show was history. But asked recently about the future of “Family Guy,” Berman seemed to be tentatively pulling for MacFarlane.

“The company remains optimistic about the future of ‘Family Guy.’ At no point was it canceled,” she said.

No Reorders but No

Pink Slip Either

Still, Berman didn’t exactly give the show a full vote of confidence.

“To be fair, it hasn’t been reordered yet, either,” she added. “It is entirely possible--although not definite--that the show will be picked up. And we are encouraged by the summer results.”

Says MacFarlane: “It’s been such a roller coaster.”

As a matter of fact, MacFarlane, who copped a production deal at Fox worth between $2.5 million and $3 million, starting letting staffers go a month ago thinking the end had indeed come, though he continued working on the episodes scheduled for summer.

Although some Fox insiders don’t see the series coming back before the spring if it does return, the show’s creator thinks it could be sooner than that.

He knows it won’t be easy. But MacFarlane said that when he talked to Berman, she told him “it’s going to be a battle” but that “she’s a fan of the show.”

Shopping the show around to a cable network doesn’t seem to be an option because each half-hour episode costs about $1.1 million--a budget-buster by cable standards.

Despite the still-high odds against its return (a decision is expected this month), MacFarlane says: “Everybody feels that no matter what happens this thing is going to have an afterlife of some kind.”

If so, it’s unlikely to be in heaven.

“Family Guy” airs Tuesday nights at 9 on Fox. The network has rated it TV-14-L-S (may be unsuitable for viewers under 14; advisories for language and sex).