Family Guy Remainders

Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, a 54-minute DVD that can be had at Amazon for about $1.50 per laugh-out-loud gag, promises "uncensored, uninhibited, and unbelievably funny" outtakes from t

he Family Guy creator's work, exemplifying "the kind of smart, raunchy, and twisted humor you can't see on television no matter how hard you try."

The implication is that the DVD contains material nixed by network censors fearful of fines imposed by what a memorable Family Guy musical number dubbed "The Freakin' FCC." That is not entirely true, to judge by the similarity between some of these shorts and others that have made it on the air (involving AIDS, masochistic farm animals, and gratuitous celebrity insults, for instance). To the extent that the DVD does reflect the FCC's hang-ups about poop and penises, it suggests that overturning the ban on "broadcast indecency," as a federal appeals court recently did, may herald something less than a revolution in comic invention. —Jacob Sullum