Hi guys,
So I was watching the Family Guy marathon on FOX tonight with some friends. For those who don't know, the show used to be on Fox but they kept shuffling it around in the schedule and got it cancelled. Then Cartoon Network started showing it on Adult Swim at night and it took off, and now Fox has decided to actually bring it back. So tonight they have a mini-marathon of older episodes. Cool, right? But leave it to Fox to screw it up AND alter an episode to remove a negative reference to Dubya...
... so aside from their bleeping out words and blurring out things that are usually in the episodes when they're shown on Cartoon Network, they actually CHANGED a gag in one of the shows.
The joke was really just a throwaway gag in the middle of a song, where Brian (the dog) is summing up the last thirty years to an elderly shutin. He takes a deck of cards and sings a line to the tune of who knows how it all will end. He flips out four cards, showing a mushroom cloud and a couple of other things like plague, etc. Every time I've seen the episode before, the fourth card showed Beloved Leader George W. Bush (the show was cancelled sometime around the 2000 election).
THIS time, however, the card showed Jerry Springer. THEY CHANGED THE EFFING CARD. I swear I'm not making this up; can anyone confirm this? I freaked out because I was waiting for the Dubya joke and it didn't come. Since my friends all have lives and haven't memorized each episode like I have, none were able to confirm the change.
Was anyone else OCD enough to notice this? It's killing me. I must know how and why this change was made. Did Fox mandate it? They've been screwing over Seth McFarlane since they first aired the show so I wouldn't be surprised. I can't imagine him changing it of his own volition. Can anyone help get to the bottom of this? I'm desperately curious...