The third season of Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy finds television's most dysfunctional cartoon family even more animated than usual. As MacFarlane himself noted, he was inspired to go for broke, thinking that the series--already juggled like a hot potato in the US TV schedules (at one point, it aired opposite the mighty Friends)--had been cancelled. Just as This Is Spinal Tap walked the fine line between "clever and stupid", so Family Guy gleefully mocks the line between "edgy and offensive". Like The Simpsons, Family Guy lends itself to multiple viewings to catch each densely packed episode's way-inside "one-percenter" gags (so-called by the creators because that is the percentage of the audience who will get them), scattershot pop-culture references, surreal leaps and gratuitous pot shots at everyone from, predictably, Oprah, Kevin Costner and Bill Cosby to, unpredictably, Rita Rudner. Also like its Springfield counterpart, this series benefits from a great ensemble voice cast, with surprising contributions from a no-less-stellar roster of guest stars. --Donald Liebenson
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![Family Guy - Season 3 [1999]](http://img.listal.com/image/products/200/B00009PGWO/dvds/-family-guy-series-3.jpg "Family Guy - Season 3 [1999]")
