Recently, I’ve been getting more into animated sitcoms, like “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and especially “King of the Hill”. Animated sitcoms have grown increasingly popular these last couple of decades, and I thought that taking a look at a small sample of them would help me understand what makes these shows so popular. For this article, I watched the top five rated episodes (according to IMDB’s user rankings for these shows) of five different shows: “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “King of the Hill,” “Bob’s Burgers,” and “Futurama”. I will be ranking them from worst to best and assigning them a rating for how good I think they are and how worth watching they are.
#5: “Bob’s Burgers”:
“Bob’s Burgers” is just not a fun show to watch. Throughout the five episodes, I think I only got close to laughing at a gag once or twice. I think the characters are uninteresting, the gags aren’t that funny, and this show has run for an unholy 15 seasons. How they get viewer retention on this show is one of the great mysteries of life. I was struggling to pay attention while watching these, it was just not an enjoyable watch. The only plot I found mildly engaging was the highest-rated episode, Season 13, Episode 10: “The Plight Before Christmas,” and even then it was barely interesting. The main character, Bob, just didn’t shine enough in his role, he just seems like a boring side character half the time. There were some good moments, but they were few and far between. Overall, not a show I would recommend to anyone ever, I’d give it one and a half stars out of five.
#4: “Family Guy”:
I like “Family Guy” as much as the next guy. I think it’s a fun show with mostly decent humor and engaging characters. I think it can be a little crass at times with their humor, but overall, it’s mostly just an edgier version of “The Simpsons.” I think that “Family Guy” overall is quite good and entertaining to watch, but if given the option between “Family Guy” and any of the higher options on this list, I’d likely pick the latter. “Family Guy” is a decent watch, although I think a lot of the humor stems from fairly edgy jokes and carrying a certain bit on for far too long on occasion. Although, I will admit that I think “Family Guy” gets better as it goes along. Often in long-running shows like this, the writing gets worse as it goes along, but I think in later seasons, the writers hit their stride. I’d give “Family Guy” three out of five stars. It’s not too bad.
#3: “Futurama”:
I enjoyed “Futurama” a lot more than I thought I was going to. I was expecting it to be closer humor-wise to “Bob’s Burgers” or “Family Guy,” but it was closer to “The Simpsons.” This makes a lot of sense, as I learned later since the creator of “The Simpsons” helped create “Futurama” as well. “Futurama” is also the one out of this list that I had never seen any of before, I’d had seen at least a little bit of all of the others beforehand. Going into “Futurama” almost completely blind, I overall enjoyed what I saw. My one main complaint was with the intro, I do not like the intro song or animation at all and I’m not sure why. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way. But overall, it’s not a bad show, I’d give it another three out of five stars, only slightly beating “Family Guy.”
#2: “King of the Hill”:
“King of the Hill” is spectacular. A real jump up in quality from “Futurama.” “King of the Hill” is more laid back than the rest of the shows on this list, but it makes up for that with its incredibly unique character writing. Pretty much every character that makes recurring appearances, as well as the main family, are very unique personalities and all have their traits and quirks. It’s really interesting to watch these interactions because of this, especially when the characters are forced into awkward or funny situations. The main character, Hank Hill, seems close-minded at first but always seems to learn some sort of powerful lesson at the end of an episode that makes him more accepting of certain people and ideas. It’s a perfect example of good character growth from a good character, and lots of other characters go through similar developments as well. Overall, “King of the Hill” is just very well done, and I think earns a very solid four-and-a-half star rating.
#1: “The Simpsons”: Arguably one of the most popular animated sitcoms of all time, “The Simpsons” is so much funnier than I remember it being. The top five episodes from this show were all from earlier episodes of “The Simpsons” and I can see the trope among shows like these where they get worse as they go along. That does seem to be the case with “The Simpsons,” but the early episodes are the peak for this genre of show. I love the writing, some of the jokes are a bit old, but most of them have aged extraordinarily well and still had me laughing at almost all of them. I do think that “The Simpsons” is a very close ranking with “King of the Hill” for me, and just barely beats it out. I think both are exceptional shows, but “The Simpsons” just has a special charm to it. I’d give it a four and a half out of five stars, it’s a very fun watch to be dedicated to, but also to just have on in the background. I would highly recommend it.
