Family Guy hits huge milestone tonight: How to watch

Family Guy is slated to hit a major milestone when it returns to television tonight.

The season 24 premiere of Fox’s hit animated series — airing Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. ET — will also mark its 450th episode.

“Season 24 will continue to push comedy boundaries, providing an unexpected take on current events, pop culture and family itself,” an official description of the premiere episode read. “The season premieres with its landmark 450th episode, when for the first time in the show's history, Lois and Stewie finally understand each other -- thanks to Brian's edibles — and explore and try to explain their complicated relationship.”

“Also this season Peter and the guys get shipwrecked on Fire Island, Chris and Brian perform a lobotomy on a social-media-crazed Stewie, and Lois and Meg take their love for pumpkin spice latte to criminal extremes.”

Created by Seth MacFarlane, Family Guy premiered in 1999 and centers around the Griffin family. In addition to MacFarlane, the cast features the voices of Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis, and Arif Zahir.

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The show has a history of controversial jokes and rarely holds back when choosing to mock certain celebrities. Still, it has retained somewhat of a loyal following — enough to keep it on the air for well over two decades.

Taking a look at how the animated series survived 20 seasons in the era of political correctness, The Independent’s Louis Chilton wrote in 2021: “Family Guy’s enduring survival could be down to a gradual maturation in other areas. The animation, a full-blown eyesore in its early days, has improved ten-fold.

“Increasingly, the humor has scaled back the frenzied, puerile cutaway gags, and increasingly takes a more self-aware tone. More risks are taken, too, with its format, such as an entire episode devoted to a fake in-universe DVD commentary, or a triptych emulating the filmmaking aesthetics of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Michael Bay.

“This long-term creative stamina is nothing to be scoffed at: by its own 20th season, The Simpsons was over a decade past its peak and had already lost all trace of what made it such a monumental piece of TV. Regardless, Family Guy’s viewing figures have declined substantially over the years, at least on traditional TV. In 2000, and 2002, Family Guy was twice cancelled by Fox for low viewership ratings, before being revived due to high DVD sales and the popularity of Adult Swim re-runs.

“Now, it draws less than half of what it did at its lowest pre-cancellation ebb. Maybe there just aren’t enough people still watching to really cultivate much offence.”

Season 24 of Family Guy premieres February 15 at 9:30 p.m. ET on Fox. Streaming will be available the next day on Hulu.