“Family Guy” will be taking a big progressive step forward, with showrunners Alec Sulkin and Rich Appel telling TV Line the show will no longer be making jokes at the expense of the LGBTQ community.
The announcement actually came in Sunday’s Donald Trump-themed episode, in a particularly meta scene in which Griffin family patriarch Peter (voiced by series creator Seth MacFarlane) tells cartoon Trump that the show will “phase out” gay jokes.
According to Sulkin and Appel, the decision is simply to allow the show, which debuted back in 1999, to reflect current cultural standards.
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“If you look at a show from 2005 or 2006 and put it side by side with a show from 2018 or 2019, they’re going to have a few differences,” Sulkin explained. “Some of the things we felt comfortable saying and joking about back then, we now understand is not acceptable.”
This, added Appel, is a natural progression for a show that’s been around for as long as “Family Guy”.
“If a show has literally been on the air for 20 years, the culture changes,” he said. “And it’s not us reacting and thinking, They won’t let us [say certain things]. No, we’ve changed, too. The climate is different, the culture is different,. and our views are different. They’ve been shaped by the reality around us, so I think the show has to shift and evolve in a lot of different ways.”