A common misconception among more casual “Family Guy” fans is that creator Seth MacFarlane is personally responsible for every creative decision. Although he plays many characters, his presence in the writers’ room is much lighter than one might think. He has mentioned in interviews that he hasn’t written for “Family Guy” since around 2009, and even before that he had only officially written the scripts for three episodes. That’s right: only three episodes out of the show’s entire 400 episodes were written by MacFarlane.

Of course, as any writer of a long-running sitcom will tell you, the writing of these shows is very collaborative. There will often be one writer who gets credit for the episode, but the script will usually go through several revisions from the rest of the team. I know from interviews with the writers of “Rick and Morty” and “Futurama” that it’s often difficult for staff to know who wrote which joke and who exactly came up with each individual idea. (When it comes to the show worst episodes everthis ambiguity is probably a relief.)

To say that Seth MacFarlane only wrote three episodes is probably an understatement for his creative contribution to the series; However, the fact remains that he only received primary writing credit for three episodes: “Death Has a Shadow”, “Family Guy Viewer Mail #1”, and “North by North Quahog”. So how were they?

Seth MacFarlane wrote the very first episode of “Family Guy,” and it pretty effectively set the tone for its pre-cancellation era. Of course, there’s a lot of edginess here from the early series that would later be removed – Meg is a completely different character here, even taking into account the change in voice actor, and most of Peter’s group of friends would be written out – but for the most part, it feels like a regular early-season episode.

Perhaps the most interesting part of “Death Has a Shadow” is how it sets itself apart from “The Simpsons.” even if it is clearly inspired by it. The pilot features a dirty-talking baby, a wise-talking dog, and the somewhat jarring cut format in the first few minutes, and just expects the audience to get on board. He has a type of confidence shared by the “Futurama” pilot from the same yearwhere you can see the writers learn from that awkward first season of “The Simpsons” and do their best to get going.

Although the pilot is a few people’s favorite episode of “Family Guy”, it is probably one of the most memorable episodes of the series, mainly because “Family Guy” would return to the episode of ” Back to the Pilot” from 2011, giving fans a fun reflection on just how much the show (and the world) has changed since that first episode aired. “Death Has a Shadow” isn’t the best episode MacFarlane has written, but it’s not a bad start to the series.

Although “Family Guy” never had an annual anthology tradition like “The Simpsons” did with their Treehouse of Horror Episodesthis season 3 episode was one of their first attempts at trying something similar, and it worked pretty well. The first story is about Peter receiving three wishes from a genie and handling them with all the wisdom we know he is capable of; the second is about the family gaining superpowers and going wild with them; the third is an adorable homage to “Little Rascals” where we get to see the adult characters from “Family Guy” when they were chubby-cheeked children.

No segment overstays its welcome, and the series would continue to do occasional anthology episodes for the remainder of its run. I don’t think anything here lives up to Season 7’s “Three Kings,” which uses its three-in-one format to give us parody segments of “Misery,” “Stand By Me” and “Shawshank Redemption” by Stephen King. ” but I’m not sure this episode would have happened if “Viewer Mail #1” hadn’t been so well received in the first place.

As well as including a fun parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s best film The season 4 premiere also featured perhaps the series’ best dig on the Fox network. After the show has spent almost four years off the air, “North by North Quahog” begins with Peter entering the house and announcing that they have been canceled. When Lois asks if there is any hope that Fox will change its mind and put them back on television, Peter responds:

“We just have to accept the fact that Fox needs to make room for great shows like ‘Dark Angel,’ ‘Titus,’ ‘Undeclared,’ ‘Action,’ ‘That ’80s Show,’ ‘Wonderfalls,’ ‘Fast.’ . Lane”, “Andy Richter Controls the Universe”, “Skin”, “Girls Club”, “Cracking Up”, “The Pits”, “Firefly”, “Get Real”, “Freaky Links”, “Wanda at Large “, “Costello”, “The Lone Gunmen”, “A Minute with Stan Hooper”, “Normal Ohio”, “Pasadena”, “Harsh Realm”, “Keen Eddie”, “The Street”, “American Embassy”, “Cedric the Entertainer”, ‘The Coachman, “Louie” and “Greg the Rabbit”.

The joke is that all of these shows were quickly canceled; The early 2000s were a period where Fox executives made a series of terrible decisions, and apparently Seth MacFarlane really wanted to make sure everyone knew how incompetent they had been. A bit like “Futurama” years later“Family Guy” had the last laugh.

Aside from this opening, the episode takes inspiration from “Death Has a Shadow” and continues business as usual; Peter gets up to some wacky shenanigans in Plot A while Brian and Stewie try to keep Chris and Meg in Plot B. It’s interesting how much the definition of a “normal episode” has changed since 1999; by season 4, “Family Guy” had figured out how well Brian and Stewie worked together as a comedy duo. (In Season 1, they were more likely to pair Brian with Peter, while Stewie would be busy trying to kill Lois again.) MacFarlane essentially had to write two different pilots for “Family Guy,” and they both did much to establish the new standards of the series.