There is no denying that the people behind the writing of Family Guy are progressive liberals just like a vast majority of all entertainment in America. If they decide to do anything politically oriented in their shows it always has a left-leaning slant and pokes fun regularly at popular conservative notions. They go after the usual stuff like Trump supporters but not in a direct way, they will just have a bunch of people wearing red hats that do something stupid and it is obvious what they are making fun of.
Sometimes, like in an episode I recently watched, they will approach a somewhat current political event head on such as when in the USA a bunch of people on one side were demanding that historical statues be taken down in the States because of the fact the person who the statue was honoring had some bad traits by today's standards such as harming Native Americans or being on the wrong side of the slave trade issue. This was something that was big news for about 5 months in USA when statues were being torn down all over the nation because someone who was rather instrumental in the formation of the country happened to own slaves at one point 250 years ago.
While the criticism is fair enough, it is rather predictable that Family Guy is going to take a progressive point of view on any of these issues. I think that to some degree that if you are going to remain a TV show, and Family Guy has been around for more than 20 years, that you MUST take a progressive standpoint on these issues or face getting cancelled.
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In an episode that is about halfway through season 19 the statue situation is exactly what they approach as their main theme when it is discovered that Pawtucket Pat, the founder of Pawtucket Patriot Ale (beer?) is discovered by Brian the dog that he stole his recipe from the Native Americans that were on the land when he arrived there. A group of people who are diverse emerge that want the statue torn down, and a group of entirely white males arrive that want the statue kept up. This is not a fair representation of what happened in real life but for the sake of humor we give it a pass.
It doesn't really matter to me because this doesn't impact my life at all, but I do think that this was rather dangerous ground for any show to be treading on. We have seen how businesses that take a particular social or political standpoint end up losing a lot of their users / viewers once they decide they are going to be on one side, so I think that Family Guy was actually very careful to present both sides of the story in this one. At one point Lois, who is normally the voice of reason in the family, starts to argue that it isn't fair that people who were alive hundreds of years ago be judged by the standards of today. Peter of course is immediately all for keeping the statue up and is presented as an idiot for doing so but that is kind of what Peter does in every episode so this isn't surprising.
It kind of goes the way that you think it would with the statue getting torn down and in the end once it is gone people in the community forget what they were even arguing over just a short while later - just like in real life. People get so wrapped up in the latest political thing that they don't realize at the time that what they are getting so heated up over doesn't actually matter all that much.
But the interesting thing was when Peter makes a bit of a speech at the end of it that kind of shows that maybe, just maybe Seth McFarlane is willing to take on the Hollywood establishment a little bit.
Peter says to his family and by extension the audience "There are tons of films where a traditionally conservative person ends up adopting progressive values at the end and these films are celebrated and often win a bunch of awards, now can you name any film, not just an award-winning one but ANY FILM where the opposite is the case? A story where someone with wacky liberal ideals adopts a more conservative outlook? Can ya? Can ya?"
They list a ton of example of some conservative person becoming more liberal with Green Book, Driving Miss Daisy, Gran Torino and others but his family and we as the audience are left with a blank slate because he is right. There are no films like that not because this situation has never happened, but because film-makers are terrified to even attempt to make something like this. They would be squashed by the establishment if they ever tried to do so.
So I guess you could say that I appreciate the fact that Family Guy would even do so much as to even mention this. I don't know if they got any blowback from this but I would imagine it was frowned upon because he is right. The only side of the "attitude reversal" that is ever exhibited in TV and films only goes one way.
I'm sitting here the next day still trying to come up with a movie where someone very liberal was converted to some conservative way of thinking and the fact that this happened was celebrated and touching and I am coming up with nothing. I'm sure there are some strange low-budget Christian films out there that did this, but nothing mainstream.
Can you think of any? Because I am at a loss here.