Carrot Top Didn't Love His Most Iconic Line From Family Guy
Ask the average person on the street to name their favorite Carrot Top prop, and after asking you where Carrot Top is now, there's a good chance they'll cite the "See-Saw," the handsaw with eyeglasses affixed to it. What they may not even realize, or care about if they did, is that this prop is not actually from Carrot Top's act — instead, it originates from 2006's "Petergeist," Season 4, Episode 26 of "Family Guy." You can watch the cameo for yourself on YouTube.
Carrot Top voices himself in a cameo role in this episode (one of many such cameos over the course of "Family Guy"), and you might assume, given that fact that he signed off on the joke, but in fact, he hates it and says it isn't really representative of his comedy. That makes it all the more irritating that it has arguably become more famous than anything he's come up with in his career.
Prop comedy has gotten a bad rap over the years, and it might seem silly for Carrot Top to look down his nose at such a joke, claiming that his own signature-designed props operate on a different level than the simple wordplay of the See-Saw. But when you listen to him speak on the subject, it starts to make a little bit of sense.
He spoke about the joke during his Joe Rogan interview
During his appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience" (via YouTube), Carrot Top gave listeners a look into his creative process and his various inspirations over the years. It's a surprisingly serious conversation for someone whose work is as silly as Carrot Top's, and during the conversation about his "Family Guy" cameo, you can see that he does take his work in prop comedy seriously, to the point of resenting his work being misrepresented on the show.
"They sent me the script," recalled Carrot Top, and when the comedian saw the See-Saw gag, he objected, telling "Family Show" creator Seth MacFarlane that it didn't fit what his material was actually like. "But See Saw is really...stupid," Carrot Top remembers telling MacFarlane, only to find out that it was MacFarlane himself that wrote the gag (with the intention of it being "stupid," but still!). Unfortunately, even if MacFarlane had wanted to use an actual Carrot Top prop for the joke, the animation on the sequence was already completed, leaving Carrot Top in the position of either doing the joke or having himself voiced by another actor.
"I still to this day get [people on the street shouting] "See Saw!," says Carrot Top, so even if he wasn't crazy about the gag, he is forced to acknowledge its popularity. It doesn't seem like he will add it to his act any time soon, though.