All three Family Guy episodes were written by series creator Seth MacFarlane

It’s a common misconception among Family Guy fans that creator Seth MacFarlane is personally responsible for every creative decision. Although he voices many characters, his presence in the writers’ room is much lighter than one might think. He’s 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 of the show’s 400 episodes were written entirely by MacFarlane.

Of course, as any writer of a long-running sitcom will tell you, writing these shows is extremely collaborative. There is often one writer who gets credit for an episode, but the script will usually undergo multiple reviews from the rest of the staff. I know from interviews I’ve done for the books “Rick and Morty” and “Futurama” that it’s often difficult for employees to keep track of who wrote the joke and exactly who came up with each individual idea. (When it comes to presentation Worst episodes everThis ambiguity may come as a relief.)

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

Seth MacFarlane wrote the first episode of Family Guy, and he effectively set the tone for the pre-cancellation era. Sure, there’s a lot of early series tension here that will be ironed out later — Meg is a completely different character here even factoring in the voice actor change, and most of Peter’s group of friends will be deleted — but for the most part, it feels like just a regular early-season episode.

Perhaps the most interesting part of “Death Has a Shadow” is the way it’s tangentially distinct from “The Simpsons.” Even if it was clearly inspired by it. The pilot introduces a talking evil kid, a wise-cracking talking dog, and a somewhat choppy look for the first few minutes, just expecting the audience to come on board. He has a kind of confidence that he shares “Futurama” pilot from the same yearwhere you can see the writers learning from the strange first season of “The Simpsons” and trying their best to get to work.

Although the pilot is only a few people’s favorite episode of Family Guy, it is perhaps one of the best-remembered episodes of the series, mainly because Family Guy returned to the episode in 2011’s “Back to the Pilot,” introducing Fans have fun reflecting on how much the series (and the world) has changed since that first episode aired. “Death Has a Shadow” isn’t the best episode MacFarlane wrote, but it’s not a bad start to the series.

Although “Family Guy” will never have an annual anthology tradition like “The Simpsons” does with their Treehouse of Horror episodesThis third season was one of the early attempts to try something similar, and it worked great. The first story is about Peter getting three wishes from the Genie and dealing with them with all the wisdom we know he’s capable of; The second is about a family getting superpowers and dealing with them frantically; The third is a great homage to “Little Rascals” where we get to see the grown-up “Family Guy” characters when they were chubby-cheeked kids.

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

Plus including a fun parody of best alfred hitchcock movie, The Season 4 premiere also featured perhaps the best of the show’s revelations on Fox. After the show has been off the air for nearly four years, “North by North Quahog” begins with Peter entering the house and announcing that it has been cancelled. When Lois asks if there’s any hope that Fox will change their minds and bring them back to television, Peter replies:

“We just have to accept the fact that Fox has to make room for great shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That ’80s Show, Wonderfalls, and Fast. Lin,” “Andy Richter Controls the Universe,” “Skin,” “Girls Club”, “Crack”, “Drill”, “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 Tick,” “Louie,” and “Greg the “Bunny”.

The joke is that all those shows were canceled so quickly. The early 2000s were a time when Fox executives made a series of terrible decisions, and it seems like Seth MacFarlane really wanted to make sure everyone knew how incompetent they were. Much like “Futurama” years later“Family Guy” got the last laugh.

Outside of this opening, the episode takes a cue from “Death Has a Shadow” and continues business as usual; Peter gets up to some weird shenanigans in Plot A while Brian and Stewie try to babysit 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 discovered how well Brian and Stewie worked together as a comedy duo. (Back in Season 1, they were likely to pair up Brian and Peter, while Stewie was busy trying to kill Lois again.) MacFarlane had to write two different pilots for “Family Guy,” and both did a lot for him. Setting new standards for the series.