I've always felt that this show serves us best by bringing forward something lesser known or often misunderstood and giving us a perspective that helps us to better appreciate it. That being said Family Guy has not gotten better as time has gone on, it has only ripened as a medium through which we see a quirky TV family gradually growing more and more cynical, dysfunctional and heartless, which is pretty much the same reaction people would have if they were forced to put up with Peter Griffin's shit every day. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is the same reaction many nurses feel having to live with aggressively difficult special needs patients.
So forgive me for saying so but jumping on your soapbox now, five years after it would have mattered to tout how much the show has somehow matured into something worth watching every week, seems really weak. I never loved the show, I've stopped hating it, and I've stopped caring about it or anything MacFarlane puts out, and at best I want these characters suffer horribly because I'm sick of them getting away with grotesque acts that they deserve to be punished for, but don't because that kind of unaccountability is supposed to be a punchline we laugh at instead of a painful truth that desperately needs addressing in the real world. And no, Peter punching Lois in the face and her just taking it are not satirical and poignant looks at the deploring realities of domestic violence, that's Seth saying "Now play a Tiny Turner song so we can remember how Ike hit her! It'll be hilarious!" Turning around and making an episode about the men killing an abusive husband only demonstrates that those kind of issues aren't funny and don't belong on an animated TV show.
If you want to bring this kind of thing to "The Big Picture" maybe it would be better to choose shows that have a place in the current zeitgeist. Family Guy is too recent to be nostalgic and too old to be relevant. Instead of poking fun at how Adventure Time or Futurama are these "untouchable" shows even as you pretend to be brave for admitting you like a show people have long since stopped caring about--like calling yourself a Pokemon fan a year after its original fanbase became adults--you can stand up and say "Fuck it, Futurama needed work and I'm sick of Adventure Time being called deep and philosophical when really it's just a laundry list of dramatic cliches stolen from shows like The Walking Dead but given to us through the non-offensive medium of a squiggly cartoon show."
