Ratings Guy instance of television series episode
"Ratings Guy" is the second episode of the eleventh season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 7, 2012. The episode follows the Griffin family becoming a Nielsen family and Peter attempting to take over the TV airwaves.
This episode was dedicated in memory of both Phyllis Diller (who voiced Thelma Griffin in several episodes of the show) and Michael Clarke Duncan (who had a brief voice role in this episode). This episode was also one of Duncan's final roles before his untimely death from complications following a heart attack a month earlier.Reception
"Ratings Guy" originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 7, 2012. The episode received a 3.4 rating and was watched by a total of 6.70 million people, this made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night, beating The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, American Dad! and The Simpsons with 6.57 million. The episode was met with mixed reviews from critics. Kevin McFarland of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B−, saying "Ratings Guy" didn't insult Nielsen viewers for championing shows that are at odds with critical consensus or ignoring the “best shows” like AMC's cable darlings or HBO/Showtime material, which I'll take as a small saving grace. It focused more on the production end, how the industry grovels and panders to the masses in hopes that they can mechanically churn out desirable programming at the lowest possible cost, instead of striving to produce something of quality and finding a way to make it work. There's a deeper point somewhere in this episode. But after a first act that easily punctuated beats with a lot of laughs, whatever it is Seth MacFarlane and the writers wanted to say about television in general, and how Nielsen ratings disproportionately affect what the industry produces, got muffled by a mood-killing second act and a sloppy conclusion.Carter Dotson of TV Fanatic gave the episode three and a half stars out of five, saying "Yet the show painted such broad strokes, as it does tend to do, that it didn’t really have a whole lot to say, other than that they think idiots determine what’s ‘popular’ and what isn't. Yeah, that's an original viewpoint. It's ironic that this show, hardly the most intelligent one on TV, is determined to be more popular than a show like Bob’s Burgers, thanks to the Nielsen ratings. Stones, glass houses, and whatnot, though it was low ratings that caused the show to die twice. But it's also the same ratings that's caused the show to keep going, through its cable revival and high ratings since then. And as with every criticism of Nielsen, there's no real solution for what to do that's better, really. So it winds up all feeling like empty words. It may have been topical, but it felt punchless. I was moderately amused, but felt like there was so much more that could have been said. It's a waste of the platform for only a few reference-based yuks."
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