Cutaway gags: lazy or genius?

I've been watching a bunch of Family Guy as I usually keep it on during the day and every episode will have several cutaway gag scenes with some being very funny. Although after burning through a few seasons it became very formulaic for the show, there will be a main storyline that they are working their way through and suddenly Peter (or someone else) will say "this reminds of the time..." and boom there is a cutaway gag scene.

Again some are funny but most have nothing to do with the original storyline, so is it just lazy writing since they are unable to come up with something funny with the current story or is it genius for finding a way to insert extra laughs into a show?