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.

 

In this Very Special Episode, Joe and Bonnie Swanson's son Kevin returns from the Iraq War. Remember Kevin? He was good for some off-the-cuff jokes over the years. Then we learned that he had been killed in Iraq. Now we find out that he was killed on Thanksgiving (cue violins). But wait, he survived! 

 

At first we're made to think that Kevin has been in an anonymous coma for the last five years. Then we learn that he took the opportunity of an IED explosion in the barracks to defect from the military. And from that point on, it's just a bunch of moralizing back and forth. Which is worse: being a deserter, or fighting an unsupportable war of aggression?

 

Oh and also: this episode literally Godwins itself. I could hardly believe it.

 

There are a few attempts at lifting the mood that only half work. I like the failed cutaway, where the guys in Peter's brain panic and eventually slot in a cutaway to the Cowardly Lion as Lindsey Lohan's gynecologist. Brian being able to predict one of the lines in Kevin's poetry was a pretty great moment, even if it was like the pot calling the kettle black, I still laughed.

 

I kept drifting away from the episode and losing the thread. At one point I realized that I had started reading a newspaper that had been left near the television. Then I got distracted by wondering whether Kevin's actions were meant to be an homage to "Mad Men," or if that was just a coincidence.

 

Considering the Iraq War has been going on since 2003, and considering that a month ago President Obama announced an end to it by 2012, unfortunately the topic couldn't be more stale. (The first thing IS the show's fault, although the second thing isn't.) And all the moralizing made this episode sink like a stone.