Wow, I never realized that the show was this close to its Season 4 premiere. I'm still unsure if FOX will air all the new episodes this summer, or just a few, or what the hell. I guess it will be partially this summer, to accomodate FOX's desire to conquer mediocre summer viewership.

So, what do you think will be a respectable number for Family Guy to come back to? How many millions of viewers will tune in?

anyone have stats on previous ratings?

the first episode got a 12.6/21 during the superbowl halftime show and that's the highest the show ever got.

Well, Season 4 is just barely a week away, and FOX wants you to "Surrender Your Sundays" to Family Guy. Going to be tough going against The Housewives. While the chances of The Griffins beating the ladies of Wisteria Lane in the ratings is even less that 0.0000000051%, I do hope some good ratings come of this, otherwise FOX won't be happy. I cannot tell if Family Guy/American Dad will be summer shows, or if they are just getting preview episodes until May 22nd, and not returning again until November. That would only mean about three episodes, since the 15th (I believe) is for Attack of the Clones, and that would suck somethin' awful.

Oh, and... for those impatient people... *cough* http://www.torrentspy.com If you go there, and go the Latest Torrents, or simply search Family Guy... the season premier episode, airing May 1st, is leaked on there already. I'm downloading it tonight.

Anything over 10 million viewers should satisfy them. That would probably be the best numbers for non-sports program in that time-slot in forever.

I think it's the comedy overload. The X-Files always balanced things out on FOX Sundays. Even sucky ratings for the last season of X-Files are doing better than anything FOX has on now. I hope Family Guy doesn't get sucky ratings.

All the "First show ever to be resurrected" hype should give it great premiere numbers, but after that, it's iffy.

W00T!

cant wait!, i hope it gets decent ratings!, i dont want it to be cancelled again

It doesn't matter if Fox cancels it. Cartoon Network has already agreed to take on the show if it flops on Fox.

North by North Quahog was pretty damn funny. It's good to see new episodes of the his show, now if they would only somehow get rid of Chris (I know that's not going to happen but still)

Not a fan of Chris? I actually don't mind him.

Besides, without him there's no evil monkey.

oh! i didnt know that, well thats great!

That was the only Chris related thing I laughed at from 4x01.

http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1049745_3_0_,00.html

Return of Family Values
How ''Family Guy'' lived to offend another day. EW takes a look at how the cult cartoon got to return by Josh Wolk

When Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and eight scribes lounge on sofas in their writers' room, one-upping each other with twisted ideas for Fox's animated adventures of a dopey Rhode Island clan, it sounds like they're playing a new game called ''Who can make the FCC weep first?'' An upcoming episode, for example, will take tubby paterfamidiot Peter Griffin to his class reunion: What if, exec producer Chris Sheridan asks, wife Lois falls and gets a black eye before the reunion, ''and all the successful ex-jocks there are whipped, and they envy Peter because they think he beats his wife?'' Then they consider having Peter meet his favorite football team, the New England Patriots, and writer Alec Sulkin suggests that Peter urge his high school daughter, Meg, to sleep with the whole team. MacFarlane, who voices Peter, barks in character: ''When you do them, do [quarterback] Tom Brady first — as a sign of respect.''

Haven't these people heard of Janet Jackson? Are they trying to get canceled?

Oh, wait. . .they've already been canceled. But the show's fans demonstrated just how much they missed Family Guy's poop jokes, sex gags, racial insults, religious takedowns, and general nonstop sacrilege by buying 2.2 million copies of the Family Guy: Volume One DVD, making it the second-highest-selling TV DVD ever (Chappelle's Show: Season One is first).

And they watched the same 50 reruns over and over again on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block until the show regularly beat Jay Leno and David Letterman among young male viewers.

Fox — always on the lookout for a hit that doesn't have the words American or Idol in the title — couldn't ignore the demand, and made the unprecedented move of resuscitating the show two years after it was canned. (New episodes of the reanimated series premiere Sunday, May 1, at 9 p.m. on Fox.) So, three years after MacFarlane cleaned out his Family Guy office in the Valley, his staff finds itself in a new Miracle Mile conference room giddily conceiving of ways to pee on Mel Blanc's grave. ''One would like to say the wise network president figured out to put this show back on,'' says incoming Fox president Peter Liguori (who inherited FG when he was hired on March 24 to replace the departing Gail Berman, who had announced the show's return last May). ''But all we were really doing is following the people's choice.''

For a man with a scatalogical mind, MacFarlane keeps his own office quite tidy: His shelves are neatly lined with Griffin collectible dolls, and DVDs of G.I. Joe and The Flintstones cartoons are stacked on his desk as reference, because their characters will be popping up in random, pop-culture cutaway gags that are Family Guy's trademark.

After a long meeting, a weary-looking MacFarlane apologizes for diving into a pizza. Not only have he and his staff been writing new FGs for a year straight, but he's also constantly in the recording booth: Among other characters, he voices Peter, Brian the alcoholic talking dog, and Stewie, the matricidal Kim Jong II of a toddler. (MacFarlane's natural speaking voice is closest to Brian's.) He's also the main voice on American Dad, a new animated comedy he cocreated about a right-wing CIA agent/family guy that will air right after FG. Mind you, he's not complaining about the work. In fact, he still seems a little happily befuddled at how he ended up back at work at all. ''[I was sure] Family Guy would not be coming back,'' says MacFarlane, 31, whose hair has grayed slightly since he first sold the show to Fox seven years ago. ''There was no precedent for it. It would require a network to say, 'We've made a mistake.'''

When Family Guy began back in 1998, MacFarlane was an art-school graduate who had worked as an animator at Hanna-Barbera but had never written a prime-time network comedy. His next three years were a crash course in the many ways the TV business can kick your soul in the butt: The network president who had championed the show, Peter Roth, stepped down in '98 just before FG's short, promising initial stint when it aired following The Simpsons. His successor, Doug Herzog, was less supportive, moving the show into a slot opposite Frasier. . .where it was seen by approximately nobody. When Herzog left, the show lingered in precancellation limbo (MacFarlane had started to fire staff) until Berman arrived and saved it — only to swing the ax after season 3. ''I don't think Fox made a mistake,'' says MacFarlane. ''They did what any network would have done with an expensive show that was getting the numbers we were getting.''

In an effort to recoup costs, Twentieth Century Fox Television, FG's production company, tried to sell the reruns, but got no takers. Finally, Fox Home Entertainment made a deal with the Cartoon Network: The cable net could air the 50 shows for free for a month in exchange for promos touting the April 2003 release of the DVD, which was proving to be a hard sell. ''Our retailers had never heard of it,'' says Fox Home Entertainment marketing VP Todd Rowan. ''We had to arm-twist a bit just to get it placed.''

None of the execs realized how many fans were quietly pining to see it again, despite the smattering of ''Save Family Guy!'' petitions littering the Internet. But the Family faithful made its presence known when the DVD hit stores: Rowan says he knew FG was a hit ''about 3 p.m. the day it released. We get hourly reads on [sales], and it was performing way beyond anyone's expectations. We were hoping to make money on a small group of fans, but it exploded.'' Meanwhile, the show was gaining new acolytes on the Cartoon Network, where 517,000 men ages 18 to 34 were tuning in nightly. Adult Swim exec Mike Lazzo was soon pleading with Fox for more new shows, offering to buy them himself: ''I kept saying, 'We welcome the risk, because we don't think it's risky.'''

In November 2003, after MacFarlane had sold American Dad to the Fox network, Twentieth Century Fox told him it was putting FG back into production for Adult Swim and DVD. But the following May, Berman decided to reconcile with the Family and give the Griffins another try on her network first. (Each new episode will now air on the Cartoon Network 11 days later.) ''It seemed to have a bigger awareness than it did even when it was on our air,'' says Berman, now the head of Paramount's movie studio. ''The show had so many fans here that we felt it was worth trying one more time.''

MacFarlane began contacting some very surprised FG alumni. ''Seth called and my reaction was 'F--- you!''' says Alex Borstein (Mad TV), writer and voice of Lois. ''You can't get too excited: You're canceled, you're back, you're canceled, you're back. . .'' Now the writers (half of the 15 are FG veterans) are churning out scripts as if the show had never stopped: Future story lines have Peter stumbling onto a copy of The Passion of the Christ 2, organizing the National Association for the Advancement of Fat People, and discovering that, technically, he is mentally retarded.

Some did feel trepidation in returning to the network that gave them the yanking of their lives. ''It's like every time we go back to see a new Star Wars movie,'' says Seth Green, who voices half-wit son Chris. ''We're like, 'I loved you once, we had a great relationship in the '70s, it fell apart in the '90s, why couldn't you just love us the way you used to?''' Exec producer David Goodman has a more positive take: ''I don't think it's like going back to the battering boyfriend. It's going back to the drunken boyfriend who's now in AA and is all cleaned up and making amends.'' And Fox is apologizing profusely: Not only has its studio commissioned 35 episodes (compared to the usual 22), but the next few months will see a book (Stewie's Guide to World Domination), a CD (Family Guy Live in Vegas), and an 80-minute original DVD movie.

Multimedia blitzes aside, FG still has to prove itself in the ratings. It will air against Desperate Housewives, but as MacFarlane points out, that's a very different audience. (Though he adds with a laugh, ''There may be lots of beer guzzlers watching Desperate Housewives, I don't know.'') A bigger issue is that there's a huge difference between a hit on late-night cable and one in network prime time. Adult Swim brags of FG's 517,000 male viewers ages 18 to 34, but Arrested Development teeters on the brink of cancellation this season with more than 1.2 million. Plus, the Cartoon Network's repeat airings could dilute viewership for Fox, but exec VP of programming Craig Erwich dismisses this possibility: ''Our Sunday night is bigger than anything Cartoon Network has.''

With all of this, MacFarlane maintains a measured confidence in Family Guy's return and American Dad's launch. And his past turbulent experience in network TV has left him calmly realistic. ''If the shows do well, they'll be safe,'' he says. ''And if not, they should be pulled off anyway.'' Easy for him to say: With his shows, being canceled is only the beginning.

There has to be a brilliant backstory for that monkey. I'm sure he'll get his own episode.

I downloaded the first episode and it was hilarious. The opening with Peter talking about all the Fox shows that failed was a classic moment.

First episode of what!?!

Family Guy Season 4

That was hilarious. All of those shows only date back to as early as 1999. FOX has cancelled a lot of shows after less than a season, if that.

Do you need to subscirbe to torrentspy.com to d/l the episode?

The first episode was as good as ever, Ali the weather man is the best, " He gone get it "

Nope, no registering or subscribing there.

There is a backstory. Haven't you seen the episode where they explain how he became evil? It was a classic.

Ok guys, heres something I wish everyone does. I know a lot of you are downloading this episode but Family Guy needs you. We do not want this cancelled again. So even if you're downloading, make an effort to watch the show when it comes on air on Sunday. It's the least we can all do.

I'm glad to hear people aren't nitpicking here like they are on AICN n all.

I'll have to go through my dvds to find the Evil Monkey episode.

Family Guy in HD on Sunday \:D/ \:D/

Downloading is a crime [-X

The scene is only like .. half a minute but its brilliant.

Check tvtome.com and read the episode guides. It might tell you about the evil monkey origins.