Family Guy: Why last night's episode wasn't (too) controversial

If you were watching my tweets last night, you'll know that I found last night's episode of Family Guy absolutely hilarious. I absolutely LOVED seeing the sleek, high definition animation interact with the crude drawings from the pilot episode. The meta references were great as well, like Brian bringing up Stewie's early unusual manner of speaking and Stewie remarking that the TV wasn't even plugged in. Plus, the glimpse into how animation may look in a few years was fun as well. I thought it was great -- one of the rare moments where Family Guy clearly dominated against the usually stellar American Dad.

Yet when I came online today, I was shocked to see a mini-uproar over the references to 9/11 (unfortunately, even Inside Pulse joined in on the act). Why? Why was this a controversy? First and foremost, the jokes that were made were relatively tame compared to what we're used to seeing (I mean, c'mon, a song about somebody having AIDS?) Secondly, I really think that people are missing the point regarding the whole 9/11 thing -- both on a comedic and philosophical level.

On the comedic level, the fact that Stewie and Brian were high fiving about 9/11 happening IS the joke. They discovered that something far worse happened when they prevented 9/11 (millions of people, opposed to thousands, were killed in a Civil War). In order to prevent that catastrophe, they had to allow the original to happen. Within the context of the show, 9/11 was the lesser of two evils, so yes, they were happy about it. But to the viewer -- who knows that this future Civil War is fake -- the dark humor is seeing these two characters cheering for an awful thing that really happened.

On a philosophical level, it's worth noting that 9/11 was the one thing that they attempted to prevent. For all the discussion about them making light of what happened, how about the fact that it was the one event that, if given the ability to go back in time, they would try to stop from happening?

Make no mistake about it -- 9/11 was a tragic event and many, many people lost somebody dear to them. But I honestly don't believe last night's episode was ABOUT allowing 9/11 to happen. It just feels like people are trying to find controversy where there isn't one.