I will not say who I am. I will not say what position I held that allowed for me to be aware of the information I'm about to share; suffice to say, I don't hold it anymore. I have read some of the letters directed at Seth and Fox complaining about season eight of Family Guy, and while I can't officially make these statements to any press, I don't want to stay quiet anymore.

Many people feel that season eight was just off in an odd sort of way. For anyone who took note of season eight of Family Guy for the specific reason of elevated graphic violence, I wanted to say this:

Seth MacFarlane was going through a lot during the times these episodes were written and produced. He was heavily involved in writing the episodes alongside series writers, several of which made comments later regarding his apparent state of mind during writing sessions. However, more recently, when looking for corroborators, my ex-coworkers denied Seth being involved as he was, as well as 'Steve,' whom I'll explain in a bit.

A number of scenes did generate a certain amount of negative viewer response — Peter's head getting crushed between two logs, for instance — but I'd like to point out that these images were no more graphic than the things you might see on other 'adult' cartoons. In addition, there has been blood and gore in the series before; typically, it's just more spread out over the season. However, if you did feel that such imagery was out of place for the series, you were right.