‘Family Guy’ Off to Battling Start

The season premiere of Fox’s animated sitcom “Family Guy” is crude, juvenile and pointless.

In other words, fans of the show will not be disappointed.

The rest of us will continue channel surfing as fast as we can because there’s something else familiar about tonight’s episode: It isn’t funny.

“King of the Hill” or “The Simpsons” this is not.

Even the animation is flat and unimaginative in creator and co-executive producer Seth MacFarlane’s wannabe-subversive series about a dysfunctional middle-class family in New England.

As the show starts its third season (8 p.m. Fox), Peter and Lois Griffin are inspired by her pregnant sister (guest voice Carol Kane) to have another baby.

The diabolical Stewie, youngest of the three Griffin kids, is appalled at the prospect of another sibling and vows to keep his parents from getting intimate. After various wacky but unsuccessful attempts to keep them apart, Stewie shrinks himself down to microscopic size and enters Peter’s body to continue fighting the battle internally.

He ends up taking on the ultimate inner child--his unborn brother. As the voice of the brother, the ever-amusing Wallace Shawn almost brings these climactic battle scenes to life.

But talk about an uphill fight.