You'd think Matt Groening would come up with the next "Simpsons." Think again.

"Family Guy" airs Sundays at 8:30 on FOX. "Futurama" airs Tuesdays at 8:30 on FOX.

In case you've recently moved here from Bolivia, and this is the first thing you've ever read in the English language: The Simpsons, an animated television sitcom from the minds of Matt Groening and James L. Brooks, has enjoyed being the best show on television for ten years now. Perhaps the best animated TV series ever. That said, The Simpsons -- like Johnny Carson, Seinfeld, and light brown M&M's -- will disappear. The question that has been nagging the back of every yellow-skin-loving fanatic is "What will I watch next?" And TV land has answered.

First came the Superbowl. I happen to live in Denver, so I can assure that I was watching this FOX television event with eager attention, although slightly influenced by a certain product that enjoyed much commercial exposure during the game. (For the Bolivians in the audience, I was drunk on beer.) After the glorious victory and the overexposed Victoria's Secret commercials came to an end, FOX premiered a pilot for an animated series called The Family Guy. At first I groaned. On the surface, we had The Simpsons with a peach tan: fat husband ignores accented wife to do dumb things while using delinquent son and intellectual daughter as cover. Gradually, however, something strange and wonderful unfolded. What's this? Maggie is a boy! And he talks! And he's trying to kill Marge! Yes!!! Oh my gosh! The dog talks, too! And wait! The gags! They're REALLY funny!!! Ha! Ha! Kool-Aid!!!

When I sobered up the next day, all I could remember was the Kool-Aid. Then I watched a re-run of The Simpsons that night and forgot all about The Family Guy. Poor Family Guy.

The hype kicked in soon after for Matt Groening's new series, a not-quite spinoff called Futurama. Here we have something emphatically different from The SImpsons: pizza delivery guy gets cryogenically frozen and sent to the year 2999 where he meets a one-eyed girl and a drunken robot. I had to miss the first two episodes (stupid Renaissance choir practices ... oops. Great, there goes my only chance at being cool on the 'net), but I caught the third one on its new Tuesday night slot. Before the opinions start flowing, I have to say something. Casting Katie Sagal (formerly Peg Bundy of Married With Children) as the one-eyed alien woman was an evil ploy upon the part of FOX executives to coax me into looking at a cartoon character's breasts. They've preyed upon my gentle upbringing as an adolescent boy enjoying Christina Applegate and Katie Segal in the cathode flesh, and twisted it into some sick voyeuristic urge that has me ogling a drawing. This is worse than having to walk through the lingerie department at Macy's without staring at the mannequins. Why do you torture my hopelessly testosterized brain, FOX, why???

Okay. Let the opinions begin. They re-ran the Family Guy pilot after Futurama, so I got a chance to compare the two while relatively sober. I got to say it folks, Family Guy wins. Even though Family Guy's concept is so similar to The Simpsons, it delivers more punch per punchline than the atmosphere-driven Futurama. While both are worthy contenders, the key ingredient to following The Simpsons is great characters. FG falls short with Peter Griffin (the Homer clone), but otherwise delivers on funny characters. Baby Stewie is a riot every time he opens his James-Bond-Villain mouth, and the dog has an attitude that has always been missing on The Simpsons -- smug detachment. There's a scene in the pilot where the dog hits Peter on the head with a newspaper, saying "Bad! Bad!" It sounds like a cheap laugh, but comes off absolutely hilarious. Seth MacFarlane does an amazing job as the voice of nearly every character on the show. It works because the concept is so similar to The Simpsons, only the writing is fresh.

Futurama, on the other hand, doesn't really do the job when it comes to characters. At least not yet (but I'll get back to that). The only intrinsically funny character is Bender the robot, who requires alcohol to stay in working order, and this trait seems already played by the third episode. You can only do so many "Please drink and drive" jokes. The main character, Phillip Fry, is utterly unlikable. He's decadent, rude, and emphatically male, but not in the cutesy, goofy way that Homer is. The one eye is the only thing novel about Leela, and the rest of the supporting cast fail to strike the funny bone the way Apu, Chief Wiggum, Krusty, etc. do. The majority of the gags (which are actually really funny) depend on future technology, a style of writing that hearkens back to the days when Hanna Barbara ruled the animation airwaves. Being funnier than The Jetsons doesn't necessarily make Futurama better TV than The Jetsons.

But about that 'not yet' stuff. If we travel back in time to 1989, and we think real hard, we remember that The Simpsons weren't as great as they are now. In fact, the show was a one-joke sitcom on a one-joke network: Bart gets in trouble by being a bad little boy. If it weren't for those ubiquitous t-shirts and lunch pails, The Simpsons may never have generated enough revenue to hire great writers and become the groundbreaking television show that it is today. Just like Star Wars, where Lucas came up with an amazing concept but it ultimately took other people to pull it off well, Futurama will improve when Groening steps away from the writing table and eases into the comfortable chair of creative consultant.

Both series are capable fighters for the crown. Both easily beat the pretenders (Dilbert, King of the Hill, The PJ's...), and both will fall short of The Simpsons. All I can say is WATCH THEM. Watch them religiously, lest they fall prey to the same monster that ate The Critic. Ah... The Critic, we barely knew ye. That's all for now, so sit down Mr. Bolivia, I'll tell you about The Critic another time.

Date: April 9, 1999

Copyright © 1999 by Chris Magyar