LAST Sunday’s “Family Guy” had us wondering if there is no line left to cross in alleged family programming at 8:30.
In one brief scene, we watched the head shot off a John F. Kennedy Pez dispenser, after which an animated character held up another dispenser and said, “Whoa! It’s a good thing I have my Robert Kennedy dispenser.”
“There’s no question it was a tasteless joke,” said Doug Herzog, who was not yet on board as Fox’s top TV programmer when the “Family” script was approved by entertainment executives eight months ago.
Herzog, a graduate of MTV, was programming Comedy Central’s, one of whose stocks in trade is the outrageous, when he was hired by Fox, which prides itself on stretching the TV envelope.
While Herzog, during a brief break from screening pilots for next season, did not defend the “joke” in question, he said “Family” is a “great show,” a “funny show.”
‘A lot of comedy, and some of the best comedy, often offends.”
If the Kennedy bit offended, “we certainly apologize as a network,” said Herzog. “It’s something we would be keeping an eye on in the future.”
***REWIND FOR KUDOS: Surfers have a word for the superb performance Wednesday by Julia Roberts as a cool, calculating “philanthropy whore” on honey Benjamin Bratt’s “Law & Order”: bitchin’.
AND AGAIN: If every sweeps ratings stunt were like Rosie O’Donnell’s grudge match with Sally Jessy Raphael, daytime TV might actually feel like a Habitat for Humanity.
The three-day video chronicle of O’Donnell and Martha Stewart finishing off the inside of a Habitat home in Atlanta in their inimitable high style while Raphael and Norm Abrams groused through the heavy lifting outside was feel-good do-good TV.
AND AGAIN: While on the subject of feelin’ good, we have this to say about “The View’s” selection of Lisa Ling as the new co-host:
We told you so.