Reference humor is not lazy writing, it's a specific type of humor that appeals to a specific taste; being a longtime MST3K fan, reference humor appeals to me, and they do it particularly skillfully
The problem is that it can be funny when the reference is a punch line to a joke, as it was on
MST. On
Family Guy, there is no joke for the reference to be a punch line to. Apparently it's supposed to exist as its own joke. And that's just not funny.
You beat me to the punch. I think that's why the author called it lazy writing. All they're doing is finding something that was funny in its original state, and dropping the whole thing into the Family Guy. At that point, it's no longer a "reference" -- it's just blatantly copying someone else's material. It's as far from skillful, as one can get.
MST3K, on the other hand, has references. They don't keep bludgeoning you with it for 5 minutes, to make sure you really, really got it.
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