'Brickleberry'

I'm certainly no fan of Family Guy (or the works of Seth MacFarlane in general), but even someone who loves his particular brand of humor will probably find blatant Family Guy rip-off Brickleberry tiresome. It's every bit as aggressive and irritating as the worst of MacFarlane's work, plus it's completely lazy in the way it copies the visual style of Family Guy, as well as several of that show's character types, most notably the condescending talking animal (a bear named Malloy, voiced by Daniel Tosh, who is also one of the show's producers). Lead character Steve, a ranger at the titular national park, is reminiscent of Peter Griffin, and the rest of the characters are all one-note.

It's sort of amazing to watch the pilot for Brickleberry, which is is filled with tasteless jokes about Malloy getting raped by a stereotypical redneck, and realize that the rape jokes were actually toned down following Tosh's controversial clash with an audience member at one of his stand-up shows over a rape joke. If this represents a reduction in the amount of rape jokes, I don't even want to think about what the original version was like. Not that the rest of the jokes are any better; they're all unfunny efforts to shock the audience, based almost entirely on broad stereotypes. It's just endless empty vulgarity, not shocking so much as exhausting and pathetic. I think Seth MacFarlane's work is recycled hackery, but Brickleberry makes him look like a groundbreaking genius.

Premieres tonight at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central.