In the "Family Guy" Way

"Family Guy," the only TV series with as many lives as a cat, opened the table read for its landmark 100th episode to the media today. Fox Entertainment president Peter Liguori was there, as, naturally, was the cast: Series creator Seth MacFarlane (who voices epic boob Peter, voice-of-reason Brian the dog and sociopathic infant Stewie), Alex Borstein (infinitely patient Lois), Seth Green (epic boob-son Chris) and Mila Kunis (Meg, just Meg). (Adam West was wandering the premises, as well.) The title of the episode is “Stewie Kills Lois.�

Yes, after years (eight, to be precise) of threatening to off his mother, Stewie finally summons the psychopathic wherewithal to actually perform the deed (or does he?). Watching the table read (which was taped for inclusion on DVD), one got a sense of the push-and-pull the show’s writers play with the network’s no-doubt-much-beleaguered broadcast standards folks. Peter relates a winsome anecdote in which he uses some form of the word “abortion� no fewer than 15 times. Brian and Stewie imagine a rather perverse humiliation of Lois. And one the show’s notoriously random cut-away sequences finds Peter reflecting on his tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he believes he has been ordered to shoot Pat Tillman, a segment Liguori allowed was “rough.�

“Most of that will get on,� MacFarlane told me afterwards. “The censors will find arguments to keep things they think are funny. They care about the show. Those talks are never all that hellish.� MacFarlane did admit that some bits are thrown in as negotiating ploys – they’ll take something out in order to preserve another gag in dubious taste elsewhere. “Yeah, there’s some of that,� he said.

After the table read (though the walls of the production office’s conference room where the script was introduced are bare, there’s the usual assortment of creative adornment elsewhere, including old Donkey Kong and Tron video games, and a doodle on a whiteboard of a guy getting severed in two by a ping-pong table), there was Thai food and a ceremony involving a cake the size of a CEO’s desktop and lots of posing for photos. Photographers implored Mila to stick a frosting-covered finger into Seth’s mouth; sensibly, she declined.

Liguori announced to those assembled, “This is the greatest television show in the history of the television business,� adding parenthetically, “that was cancelled twice by the dorks at the network.� He declared of the milestone, “It’s not your hundredth, it’s your first hundredth.�

(MacFarlane later joked, “The only vacation I get is when we get cancelled.�)

Executive producer David Goodman responded, “Whatever mistakes were made in the first few years, the network has more than made up for it.� Whether or not that’s true, it was nice of him to say it.

When it came time for MacFarlane to speak, he said, “This is kind of awkward, because I just got offered the showrunning job on ‘King of Queens.’�

After the ceremony, MacFarlane, a boyish-looking guy whose expression perpetually seems to be anticipating some form of impudent mischief, talked about the notorious and hilarious gag from the past season in which Osama bin Laden, in the middle of taping yet another “Death-to-America� video, comes down with a case of the giggles.

“That show was three minutes short, so we needed something,� he recalled. “The main requirement was that it was gonna be long enough to fill the space. And it turned out to be one of the most popular segments of the show. Sometimes, when there’s no pressure to succeed, it works out the best.�

MacFarlane also explained how Stewie has become the voice of breaking news on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann:� “He’s a big supporter. Plus, I can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, so I felt I had to.�

During the cake-cutting ceremony, MacFarlane – no doubt playing off the episode’s theme (Lois’s murder, remember?) and certainly not indulging in some kind of demented fetish – carved up the center of the cake, bisecting Lois at the crotch. Photo-op over, he left the knife planted in poor Lois’s abdomen.