TV Industry Execs are Pricks Even in Cartoons

During yesterday's lecture my professor gave a visual example of how a person might come to TV executives with a great idea for a movie and then by the time the industry folks have had their way with it, it becomes this piece of shit mainstream work that is a shell of the former great idea.

 This reminded me of an episode of Family Guy. Regular viewers of the show might know that in addition to being the Griffin family's pet, a big time liberal, and raging alcoholic, Brian Griffin is also a failed, aspiring writer. The show has explored and referenced this in a few episodes.

 In last season's "Brian Griffin's House of Payne" episode, Stewie finds an old script Brian had written for a TV pilot. With some encouragement from Lois, Brian pitches his show to network executives. The executives love his premise, a touching drama about a 25-year-old single father raising his young daughter while trying to attend college, and decide to make the show.

 By the time Brian meets with them again, the execs have decided to make a few changes to the show:

• Instead of Elijah Wood for the father, the execs decided on James Woods
• Instead of his daughter being 4 or 5-years-old, its a hot teenage daughter preparing to start college.
• Instead of a drama, they change it to a comedy about a dad and his daughter who end up going to college together and the mayhem that ensues living in the same dorm room.
• Even the name changes from "What I Learned on Jefferson Street" to the not-at-all-offensive "Class-Holes" (Which I thought was fantastic by the way)

 By the time they're finish it's become a completely different show. It was exaggerated of course, but with Seth McFarlane and the writers being in TV so long, I'm certain its founded on a grain of truth. Plus McFarlane, through this show particularly, has become a social commentator and critic. I'm sure this episode was a statement of how the industry works. I'm curious how much of this particular episode had to be changed to appease the suits at Fox.

 Brian got a lot of flack for selling out, but how many people sell out just to get their product into the mainstream and millions of dollars. Is this always a bad thing? Class-holes was fantastically awful, but are there times where its a good thing? Is pop culture ever actually improved by this? Why do we always assume that indie and underground is always better? What do you think?

 If any of you'd like to watch this episode for yourself click here.