In its short run, Family Guy was, on an average night, funnier than the average Simpsons night during that same stretch of time.

Personally, the most suprising part of Fox picking the show up is that the creators have more storylines in the bag. I mean, some of the more recent ones have been reeeeeally thin. Several shows in the past few seasons have just been strange, or random, or (once) not funny at all.

For example, I most of the jockey stuff in the Furious D episode (like the song in the land of the jockeys), was just weird and random, and not really all that funny.

I always wonder if most of these extrememly random moments are references to things, and I'm just not able to get all of them. I mean, I used to watch the show with about 6 other people every Sunday, and I was the only person in the room who was laughing his ass off at half of the Mr X episode, because nobody else had the slightest idea what "The Prisoner" was, consequently making half the show very strange for them.

Fortunately, they've been picking up in quality lately.

I still wish Family Guy and Futurama were continuing. Another upside to Futurama was that the animation was better than anything I've seen out of cartoons lately. It looked so damn good!