Family Guy Talk

"The Blind Side"

My biggest laugh of the episode was Stewie's throw-away line about Batman having built a "giant lazy Susan for your nuclear car."

You all know how much I love it when the show rips Brian for being a pretentious, egotistical jerk. Well here ya go: a whole entire episode on exactly that topic. In the past, the show's criticism of Brian have fallen generally into two categories: his terrible writing, and his miserable track record with women. And here we are again.

On the down side, this episode didn't really bring anything new to the table that we haven't seen before. By contrast, most of the humor about Brian's writing has driven it forward, from a vague "a novel" to the colossal disaster that was Faster than the Speed of Love, an old television pilot script Stewie found in the basement, and (last I checked) a screenplay that Brian is working on.

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"Quagmire and Meg"

As soon as Quagmire comes sniffing around, the show gets paternal towards her faster than Peter does, and to much worse effect

Out of all the Family Guy episodes that have been made so far (this is episode #175) this is the only one that made me truly angry. I would be angry at any show that suddenly got some kind of crazy-ass double standard conscience and decided that a character like Meg needed to be protected from men and adult sex. But I'm doubly angry that Family Guy is the show that fell for the same old misogynist trap.

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"Grumpy Old Man"

This episode had some funny bits and some boring bits. There ya go.

This is going to be a difficult episode for me to review, because apparently it wasn't very memorable. Meaning, I sat down to write this review, and realized that I didn't remember the episode. I hadn't been drinking, and I wasn't engaged in another project while I watched it; I have no excuse.

I even took notes, but not very helpful ones. I took five notes, and none of them has anything to do with the plot, or the episode as a whole:

1. The joke about the way that every pizza place ruins salad in the exact same way was hilarious. They killed me with the final flourish about setting the lasagna pan of salad atop a stack of hot pizza boxes!

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Five Great Family Guy Quotes

Even though Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane mentioned in an October interview that he feels Family Guy should have ended, I won’t get tired of Family Guy until the quotes stop being fantastic. When I first started watching the show many moons ago the cut away scenes were my favorite parts. Now I watch the show listening for quotes to add to my list of favorites. In all honesty my list of favorite quotes expands with almost every episode, five of my all-time favorite quotes are: Read more about Five Great Family Guy Quotes

"Cool Hand Peter"

Maybe I should give the horrible, risky failures more credit. At least they aren't boring.

This was a competent episode. Workmanlike. It didn't take a lot of chances, and it didn't make a lot of funny. Which is worse? An episode that dares to take chances and then fails at them horribly, or an episode that completely phones it in? It's hard to say. I certainly dislike the horrible failures a lot more, but maybe I should give them credit. At least they aren't boring.

There were precisely three things that I liked about this episode:

1. The scene where the wine-drunk wives trick Brian into coming into the living room and pontificating about the latest Jonathan Franzen novel, only to pounce and shove him into a bee costume.

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"Amish Guy"

I actually really really hate the Amish.

This episode relied much more heavily on storytelling than usual, and it turned out pretty well. But first let me say that I am not a fan of the Amish, and I was hoping that Family Guy would be a little bit more biting on the topic.

The Amish are portrayed as the embodiment of peaceful, pastoral idealism, like a Thomas Kinkade painting come to life. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Amish treat their animals notoriously badly. They are the primary source of puppy mills in the United States. They insist that their girls get less education than the boys. Sexual abuse, rape, and incest are all common - but reporting it to the police is forbidden.

And imagine a religion so strict that if you decide to drop out of the church, none of your friends, family members, or extended community will ever speak to you again.

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Be Thankful for Continuity?

After watching Family Guy’s 2011 Thanksgiving episode, I found myself feeling very thankful for continuity. I am always praising Family Guy for the random references, musical numbers, and about a million other things; however, continuity is the real reason I love Family Guy. So imagine my surprise when the “dead” son of Joe and Bonnie turns up for Thanksgiving dinner.

"Thanksgiving"

Oh boy: moralizing about the Iraq War.

I'm glad that The Simpsons and Family Guy both had outstanding episodes last Sunday, because this episode of Family Guy was DOA. I'm not opposed to the show tackling difficult issues per se. It's just that they do it so very badly.

It started out with middling promise. The Griffins are, for reasons unknown, hosting a massive dinner party with over a dozen guests. There's the five core Griffins, plus Lois' mother and father, Quagmire, Joe and Bonnie and their daughter Susie, Mayor Adam West and Lois' sister. At first, this set-up offers a lot of fun interactions between secondary characters who wouldn't ordinarily cross paths. But then Joe and Bonnie show up, and things take a turn for the Serious.

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He Who Laughs First: Family Guy Poking Fun at Itself Yet Again

"Long-time fans of the series probably caught most of the references and jokes about previous events in the series."

After watching the preview for the fifth episode in Family Guy’s tenth season, I was pretty skeptical. The “road to” episodes are usually (in my opinion) hit or miss and I was afraid Back to the Pilot would be a bit “miss”. I love the dialogue between Brian and Stewie, but some of the jokes and scenes in a few have been obvious filler. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by Back to the Pilot.

The plot of the episode was Stewie and Brian traveling back in time… Again… The journey was prompted by a missing tennis ball, and I was prepared to be disappointed. Previous Brian and Stewie adventures started with missing items, so I began waiting for the same old gags as previous episodes. However, Family Guy was able to salvage the episode by making fun of itself and the show’s habit of beating a dead horse to death.

"Back to the Pilot"

Did I just laugh at an aspect ratio joke?

I was completely blown away by this episode. For the last few years, I have come to expect any given episode of Family Guy to be tepid, with the occasional wrong note, and a few giggles. But this episode was SO GREAT, it unfortunately has raised the bar and made everything else look crappy by comparison. At one point, I laughed so hard that I had a choking fit and had to look away from the screen. It was so good, it makes you wonder why all the other episodes were so lackluster. It's not like it costs more to write a funnier script.

Family Guy writing staff: this episode is your new standard. Live up to it!!!

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