Identification With Seth Green
Another running gag, starting in the Star Wars remake episode "Blue Harvest", has Chris defending Robot Chicken, a show created by portrayer Seth Green which is broadcast on the Adult Swim block on the Cartoon Network cable network. When Peter (Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane) denigrates that show in "Blue Harvest", Chris loses his temper and storms off. Carried on in "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side", though Chris attempts to keep a cool head, he storms off again when Peter offers to tell the story of Without a Paddle, a critically panned film that features Seth Green. Both these scenes happen in the framing device of the episode and not in the interior Star Wars narrative, in which Green portrays Chris as Star Wars hero Luke Skywalker. The gag continued in "It's a Trap," the series' parody of "Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi," as Stewie, an analogue for Darth Vader, seduces Chris, the analogue for Luke Skywalker, into a lightsaber duel by mocking Green's career, or lack thereof.
Outside of the Star Wars-themed episodes, "Road to the Multiverse" plays on the running gag, but with Stewie (MacFarlane once more) provoking the Robot Chicken Universe counterpart of Chris by asking "How does it feel to be on a major network for thirty seconds?" which prompts Chris to say "fuck you!". In the final Star Wars remake, "It's a Trap!", mocking Green's career provokes further anger in Chris; Chris tries to defend Green by citing Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an example of a success in Green's career, but Stewie suggests that Buffy's contemporary popularity had been largely over-stated by Entertainment Weekly and other commentators. These taunts give Chris — in character as Skywalker — the conviction to fight back against Stewie/Darth Vader and Carter/Darth Sidious (both played by MacFarlane). In the closing scenes of the episode's framing device, Chris gets to reverse the joke by poking fun at Seth MacFarlane's career, going so far as to suggest that Family Guy is a rip-off of The Simpsons; MacFarlane is, however, defended by the characters whom he voices (Peter, Brian and Stewie).
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Famous quotes containing the words identification with, seth and/or green:
“When we lose love, we lose also our identification with the universe and with eternal values—an identification which alone makes it possible for us to lay our lives on the altar for what we believe.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 2 (1962)
“We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilisation.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
“I’ll dance above your green, green grave
Where you do lie beneath.””
—Unknown. The Brown Girl (l. 59–60)