Series 1

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Series 1
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	62
Premiere	December 20th, 1998 (sneak peak) January 31th, 1999 (series premiere)
Finale	February 18th, 2001
Production dates	1997-2000

Series 1 is the first run of Family Guy, consisting of the first three seasons. It premiered on January 31st, 1999 with "Death Has a Shadow" and ended on February 18th, 2001 with "Family Guy Viewer Mail".

History

MacFarlane initially conceived Family Guy in 1995 while studying animation at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). During college, he created his thesis film entitled The Life of Larry, which was submitted by his professor at RISD to Hanna-Barbera. MacFarlane was hired by the company. In 1996 MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry entitled Larry and Steve, which featured a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve; the short was broadcast in 1997 as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons.

Executives at Fox saw the Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series, entitled Family Guy, based on the characters. Fox proposed MacFarlane complete a 3-minute short, and gave him a budget of $10,000. Several aspects of Family Guy were inspired by the Larry shorts. While working on the series, the characters of Larry and his dog Steve slowly evolved into Peter and Brian. MacFarlane stated that the difference between The Life of Larry and Family Guy was that "Life of Larry was shown primarily in my dorm room and Family Guy was shown after the Super Bowl." After the pilot aired, the series was given the green light. MacFarlane drew inspiration from several sitcoms such as The Simpsons and All in the Family. Premises were drawn from several 1980s Saturday morning cartoons he watched as a child, such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Rubik, the Amazing Cube.

The Griffin family first appeared on the demo that MacFarlane pitched to Fox in mid-1997. The Fox executives were impressed by the demo and ordered 18 episodes of Family Guy to air in midseason. And in 1999. renewed the show for a second and third season.

Family Guy debuted on January 31st, 1999 and had a good starting point, as it's pilot episode "Death Has a Shadow" premiered right after the Super Bowl, making it the most watched episode of the series, with an estimated 22 million viewers. And garnered decent ratings in Fox's 8:30 pm slot on Sunday, scheduled between The Simpsons and The X-Files. At the end of its first season the show ranked at No. 33 in the Nielsen ratings, with 12.8 million households tuning in. While there were some alarm bells that hinted at some screwing over, such as how FOX decided to push the second half of the first season ahead of schedule (the second half of the season was planned to air in the fall of '99, but rushed out early), but Family Guy had a decent first season run.

However, when the second season premiered, FOX gave it a new time slot, Thursday at 9 pm, on September 9th, 1999. Family Guy was pitted against NBC's Frasier, and the series' ratings declined sharply. Subsequently, Fox began trying to air episodes again on Sundays, but always seemed to flip-flop between Sundays and Thursday, causing the ratings to suffer more. In 2000, FOX returned the show on January 4, 2000, at 8:30 pm on Tuesdays, where it was constantly beaten in the ratings by ABC's then-new breakout hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. This caused some more timeslot screwy and caused the last two episodes of the second season to be delayed. And for the third season, it was even worse. With it return on October 5, 2000, with once again in a tough time slot: Thursday nights at 8:00 pm. This slot brought it into competition with Survivor and Friends (a situation that was later referenced in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story). During its third season, Fox frequently moved the show around to different days and time slots with little or no notice and, consequently, the show's ratings suffered. Upon Fox's annual unveiling of its 2001-02 fall line-up on May 14, 2001, Family Guy was absent. Fox announced that the show had been officially canceled shortly thereafter. Thus, ending Family Guy's first run.

List of Seasons

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

Episodes

Season 1

• Death Has a Shadow
• I Never Met Mr. Deaddy
• Mind Over Murder
• Do and Die
• A Hero Sits Next Door
• Peter's in Charge
• Love Your Trophy
• Brian Griffin: Portrait of a Dog
• The Son Also Draws
• A Picture's Worth $1000
• Death is a Bitch
• Wasted Talent
• Holy Crap
• Meg for Mercy
• The King is Dead
• Brian in Love
• Chitty Chitty Death Bang
• Da Boom

Season 2

• Road to Rhode Island
• I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar
• Dammit Janet!
• Running Mates
• Screwed the Pooch
• If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin'
• Peter Griffin: Husband, Father, ... Brother?
• Let's All Go to the Hop
• Employee for Fire
• He's Too Sexy For His Fat
• Fore Father
• The Kiss Seen Around the World
• Good Ol' Fargy Love
• Neighbor Pains
• The Story On Page One
• Missionary Impossible
• Between Sanity and Madness
• To Love and Die in Dixie
• Lethal Weapons
• Power Over Peter
• When You Wish Upon a Weinstein
• The Guyfathers
• The Thin White Line

Season 3

• Brian Does Hollywood
• Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington
• Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater
• Peter Griffin's All-Stars
• One if by Clam, Two if by Sea
• And the Wiener Is ...
• Blind Ambition
• Breaking Out is Hard to Do
• Mr. Saturday Knight
• A Fish Out of Water
• The Fat Man and the Sea
• A Cheater Runs Through It
• A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas
• From Method to Madness
• Model Misbehavior
• The Fat Guy Strangler
• I Take Thee Quagmire
• Death Lives
• Ready, Willing, and Disabled
• Brian Wallows, Peter Swallows
• Family Guy Viewer Mail #1

Shorts

Pilot (1998)

• Family Guy

Family Guy Shorts (Online/DVD Extras)

• Peter's Guide to Parenting
• Room of Time
• Movie Night
• Winter Effects
• Do the Fargusdance
• Mayor Messin'
• Reflection
• Night of the Living Celebrity
• Seamus' Sea Stories
• As Time Goes By

Animation Companies

• Jim Keeshen Productions (Pilot only)
• Film Roman (Episodes 2-15 only)
• Rough Draft Studios (Episodes 16-onward)
• Sunwoo Entertainment (Episodes 16-onward)

Trivia

• This is the only run to:
  • Air episodes within the 2nd millennium, with the entirety of Season 1 and 2/3's of Season 2 airing in 1999.
  • Have Rachael MacFarlane voice Meg, who would only voice her for the pilot and be replaced by Lacey Chabert until she was replaced by Mila Kunis
  • Have animation done by Jim Keeshen Productions.
  • Have Peter and Lois have "thin-line" eyebrows.
  • Have episodes rated TV-PG (for the first season and some of season two only) compared to it's usual TV-14 rating.
  • Not have Peter work at the brewery.
  • Be presented in Dolby Surround 2.0 (not counting the DVD remasters in Dolby Digital 5.1 audio)