Mere months after coming unnervingly close to killing off Conan O’Brien, Hot Ones just hosted another comedy icon of sorts: Peter Griffin. The popular YouTube show, which is predicated on the idea that celebrities will only abandon regurgitated talk show banter in favor of genuine human thought when their taste buds are being bombarded with brain-melting levels of spiciness, just crossed over with Family Guy in order to celebrate the cartoon’s 25th anniversary.
The Seth MacFarlane patriarch began the episode by claiming that he was happy to have been invited to the “decline of American journalism,” and the whole thing ultimately ended with a pantsless Peter Griffin attempting to shove his hot sauce-coated finger into host Sean Evans’ eyeball.
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This isn’t the first time that Evans hosted a literal cartoon character on his show, possibly because Hot Ones canonically takes place inside of the Who Framed Roger Rabbit universe. Back in August, Donald Duck appeared on Hot Ones to mark his 90th birthday, prompting some people on the internet to accuse the show of promoting cannibalism — although, to be fair, Donald isn’t a chicken, and he was actually eating cauliflower wings. (Or, more accurately, he wasn’t eating anything at all, because he’s a fictional, 100 percent animated character).
The episode also sparked controversy for entirely non-cannibalistic reasons. Once the video went up, viewers quickly noticed that not a single animator was credited for their work on the show. It was as if Hot Ones wanted us all to believe that Sean Evans was genuinely having a chat with a talking duck guest, as real as Al Roker or Sydney Sweeney.
Coming at a particularly perilous time for people working in the animation industry (thanks to A.I.), it was especially galling for Hot Ones to not credit the artists responsible for bringing Donald Duck to life.
Following the backlash, Hot Ones eventually re-edited the video’s description to include the names of the animators, voice actors and producers responsible for the segment. Oh, and also the writer! Yeah, apparently this wasn’t a free-flowing, off-the-cuff conversation between a dude and a nine-decade-old bird after all.
As for the Family Guy episode, it sought to avoid stoking the same fan outrage by crediting those who worked on the video. Although unlike the Donald Duck video, this one just lumped all the names into a “Special Thanks to” section of the description, without noting which role each person held.
Of course, the other big criticism of the Donald Duck video — that shoehorning a corporate-owned CGI mascot into the show purely for promotional purposes ruins the original charm of the series — presumably still stands with the Peter Griffin episode.
Also, maybe just stop asking Evans to act opposite cartoon characters? He’s not exactly at the level of Bob Hoskins, or even Michael Jordan for that matter.
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