SETH MACFARLANE

Occasionally, Seth Macfarlane, the creator of Family Guy, will admit he has gone too far. There was the script where Peter, the animated sitcom's titular patriarch, needs a kidney. "We cut to the bathroom," MacFarlane says, "and Meg [Peter's daughter] is unconscious, laying in a bunch of ice, and he's slicing a kidney out of her. It just got a groan of disgust at the table read."

When Family Guy debuted in 1999, MacFarlane -- who had sold the show to Fox when he was only twenty-four -- was trumpeted as a creative wunderkind. But critics dismissed the series as a lame Simpsons retread, and despite a small cult following, viewers seemed to agree.

"It was a very friendly cancellation," insists MacFarlane, who remained under contract with Fox after getting the ax in 2002. "They were clear they still loved the show. It wasn't like I was being kicked to the curb."

But a funny thing happened while MacFarlane was trying to develop a new show: The Family Guy cult increased exponentially. The Cartoon Network began rebroadcasting the series as part of its late-night "Adult Swim" lineup, and this time the show caught on. DVDs also sold phenomenally well: 2.2 million units in 2003 alone, becoming the best-selling TV DVD of that year.

Fox took notice and, in an unprecedented move for a major network, brought back the series earlier this year. In its second incarnation, the show has become an unqualified ratings success. And along the way, something else happened: MacFarlane became prime time's top provocateur, using his dysfunctional cartoon characters to push the standards of network TV to the limit.

Family Guy has proved a brazen willingness to embrace bad taste -- almost as if the show's writers were taunting the FCC. Episodes have included jokes about crack babies, the Special Olympics, Luke Perry's sexuality and, in the episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," the financial acumen of Jews. Brian the talking dog becomes addicted to cocaine. Peter is pronounced borderline retarded by doctors. Stewie the talking baby, having escaped his mother's "ovarian Bastille," plots her murder.

MacFarlane is not without his detractors. Kevin Smith, Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi and writers from The Simpsons have all publicly dissed Family Guy as unoriginal and poorly animated. In a magazine interview, South Park's Matt Stone said, "When people say to me, 'God, you guys have one of the best shows on TV. You and Family Guy.' That fucking hurts so bad."

But after his show's near-death experience -- not to mention his own: MacFarlane was scheduled to fly on one of the hijacked September 11th flights -- very little fazes the Family Guy creator these days. "I have this sort of Mr. Magoo career," he says. "It looks like I'm about to fall on my face, but somehow that construction beam always slides into place."

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