Seth McFarlane says 'Family Guy' doesn't rip Kanye West cause he was 'right'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Family Guy" is 150 episodes old this weekend, but Seth MacFarlane is still up for something new.

"The plot is Brian and Stewie are stuck in a vault in the Archie-Meathead, 'All in the Family' tradition," MacFarlane, writer and executive producer of the show, said of Sunday's episode.

"The idea was to do an episode that features just those two characters in one room, almost like a one-act play. No cutaways, no flashbacks. Just to see if those characters ... are dimensional enough that they can sustain a half-hour with just their personalities," he said in a recent interview.

MacFarlane's 'toon empire includes two other Sunday-night Fox shows: "American Dad" and "The Cleveland Show." This Sunday's episode of "Cleveland" will feature a guest appearance by Kanye West, one of the few celebrities not targeted by MacFarlane and his shows' writers.

"We didn't take any swipes at Kanye after the (Taylor Swift/MTV Video Music Awards) incident, because I think we've all sort of come around to realize that maybe Kanye was right," MacFarlane said with a laugh. "Like, now that we're all coming out of the Taylor Swift haze, we're thinking, 'Yes, they probably should have given it to Beyonce.' He was the only one with the (nerve) to say it."

Last week, the radical group Revolution Muslim said on its website that the animated "South Park" had insulted their prophet by depicting him in a bear costume.

The group said it wasn't threatening Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate.

"I think if we were in that position," MacFarlane said, "I would have to weigh how real is the threat. Legitimately, how real is the likelihood of actually getting murdered against 'how much do I love this joke?'"

Parker and Stone said Comedy Central edited their work in the wake of the radical group's warning.

"My guess is they ... were probably genuinely frustrated by Comedy Central and, you know, to their credit, there aren't that many people speaking out about, against the dangers of religion in the extreme and they do on a regular basis, and I think they are to be commended for that," MacFarlane said.

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