When Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" premiered on January 31, 1999 after Super Bowl Xxxiii, it got an artificial ratings bump right out of the gate that was going to be difficult for the animated series to maintain. Indeed, after finishing its first season at 33rd in the Nielsen ratings (with only seven episodes), the show's viewership evaporated during its second season and fell off even more during its third season. Almost no one was watching, so Fox pulled the plug on the series in 2002. Three years later, thanks to a surge in popularity driven by Adult Swim syndication, Fox gave "Family Guy" another shot, and it appears that it is never, ever going away. This may or may not delight you.

In any event, we have gone 26 years with "Family Guy" in our lives, and while the state of the world has been in drastic decline over this period, you can't...