Family Guy Panel

At this year's Family Guy panel, Seth MacFarlane, Alex Bornstein (Lois), Mila Kunis (Meg), Seth Green (Chris), Mike Henry (Cleveland) and showrunners Mark Hentemann and Steve Callaghan gathered to not only open the floor to some questions from fans, but also talk about the new season.

The panel started off with clips from the coming season. In those clips we see the Griffins climbing a mountain, Peter and Quagmire going to Atlantic City, and somehow, Brian and Stewie cause time to reverse.

This particular story will be the show's 200th episode, and in it, we apparently get to relive the Family Guy series in reverse order. In one scene, we even see how Greased-up Deaf Guy gets to be... well greased-up and deaf. We also get to see Peter and the Giant Chicken fight it out backwards, but the strangest part has to be when Brian and Stewie see a messy floor and an empty bottle of ipecac syrup.

The panel went into a little more detail about some of the episodes viewers should expect. In one episode, Quagmire ends up marrying a prostitute and in another, the Griffins become a Nielsen family and when Peter realizes the potential power he has, he acquires several Nielsen boxes and manipulates the ratings to make TV exactly what he wants it to be.

The first of the panel's questions was to ask MacFarlane if he was a manatee, a reference to the South Park two-part episode "Cartoon Wars" where the Comedy Central show claims to have uncovered exactly what the writing staff of Family Guy is; a bunch of manatees that move verb and noun balls from one side of a tank to the other in order to come up with their cut-away gags. MacFarlane deftly dodged the question by commenting on how he had gained some weight in the past, but he is back to feeling good and healthy, to which Green wanted MacFarlane to swear that he wasn't just wearing "some awesome robot skin suit."

The next question was about any responses the show might have gotten from famous people Family Guy has parodied, such as a story about a Carol Burnett-like character in an adult store. It was during the discussion of this scene that the panelists read a note on the back of their name cards that reminded them the audience may contain attendees under 18. Though, truth be told, this didn't seem to slow them down too much.

A suggestion by a fan for the Family Guy and The Simpsons shows swap animation styles for an episode was quickly shot down by MacFarlane. This was followed by a fan dressed as Towlie from South Park. He asked if there were any plans for more movie-spoof episodes, and MacFarlane explained that they would like to, but LucasFilm has a really progressive attitude towards spoofing and its hard to find another franchise that they would want to do that with that wouldn't have a problem with a spoof film.

At one point, a fan came up and in the voice of Herbert asked if there would be more of the old-man pervert in the coming season. This not only sparked a brief conversation between the questioner and Henry (in the voice of Herbert himself), but also the reveal of a rather interesting question where Chris decides to leave home and move in with the older man. This sparked an odd in-character conversation between Henry and Green about the "relationship." The "under 18" note on the name cards was once again pointed out and once again ignored.

Another question asked was how each of the actors were found for the show. MacFarlane explained that Bornstein was on MADtv at the time and a mutual friend suggested her for the role and she nailed it, meanwhile Kunis and Green went through standard auditioning processes. MacFarlane and Green then recounted the story about his audition. Apparently, all the other applicants looked at the sketches of Chris and did a surfer-dude voice, but on a dare, Green played him like Buffalo Bill as if he was in Silence of the Lambs.

The last question of the panel was to ask what the next "roads" episode would be. The panel revealed that it would be "Roads to Las Vegas" where Brian and Stewie teleport to Vegas, but unknowingly create duplicates of themselves. One pair will have the best possible Las Vegas experience, while the other will have the worst.