Send That Dolphin Back To The Ocean

Family Guy, S10E14

 I had heard (through some tweets) that Ricky Gervais would guest star on the last episode of Family Guy, so I was anticipating a laugh fest.  I really wish that I hadn't gotten my hopes up at all.  While I did enjoy hearing Ricky's voice, I didn't care much for most of the jokes this time.  Something was missing, but I'm not sure what.

Peter and the boys go to fish out some recently sunk Mercedes from the harbor, but pull out a dolphin named Billy instead.  Billy gets Peter a hood ornament and owes him a favor in return.  The favor turns out to be a place to stay on the surface.  The side story was about Stewie's ghetto preschool and Brian's absent attempt to help him.

I'll talk about the side story first.  The head of the preschool, Miss Emily, turns out to be a young, attractive girl with the brains of a squid, exactly Brian's type.  Not again!  So he does his regular thing of acting like a selfish douche bag, while ignoring the horrible conditions Stewie and the other kids have to go through.  The best of these horrible conditions were a random guy coming into their school and kidnapping a baby, a little boy playing with a piece of wood and a nail, and Stewie having his arm ripped out of its socket.  You would think that when Stewie came home with an arm hanging down to the floor, Brian's conscience would come back, but nope.  He just sinks lower and gags Stewie's mouth with paper and pops his arm back into place against his will.  Although Stewie is a sadistic, evil little baby, he's really a good friend because he doesn't seek revenge against Brian for thinking with his dick rather than his heart.  Actually, he's done some horrible things to Brian before for less, but I guess sometimes Stewie has to act like a baby with little power.

There was one really good line Stewie had about the preschool.  This was when Brian was stupidly defending Emily by saying she was teaching them independence:

We're 1!  Independence means we die!

Brian only comes to his senses when Emily reveals her boyfriend.  Damn you, Brian.  You're such a sorry excuse for a dog!  When she is taken away by the police, he tells her there's a special place in hell for people like her.  If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black.  It's a good thing that Brian doesn't believe in hell because he'd have a lot of things to atone for in the afterlife.  I'd like to see Brian do something outrageous like date a good girl based on her personality, rather than her looks.  But that would be asking too much.  Stewie even thanks Brian for calling the police without making comments that he took his sweet time.  Then they do a crazy freeze frame and plan to stay like that until Lois and Peter finish their conversation.  Loved that little bit.

Peter having a house guest in the main story starts off well for him.  For me, I didn't see the addition of Billy to the Griffin household being that funny.  I almost cracked a smile when Billy said that he understood that they were supposed to all hate Meg through his excellent intuition and by Peter telling him in the hall.  But for the most part, I was bored.  Ricky had a lot of fish puns that were bad, but made me smile because it was him saying them with his infectious laugh, but the more annoying he got, the less I liked him around.  He just didn't annoy anyone in a really amusing way.  At one moment Trisha Takanawa came to harpoon him, and they had this little jingle that went "Japan!  They Kill Things That We Like!"  I had to laugh, as slightly offensive as that was.  I say "slightly" because if you've been watching this show for this many years, you shouldn't be offended by anything they do anymore because they say horrible things about everyone.

They finally get Billy to go back to the ocean when they find out he was kicked out by his wife, and they help him out.  What I found interesting about this was not that Joe helplessly dropped down to the ocean as King Neptune, but was that there was a tender moment in FG, and it involved dolphins.  I feel like it's been a while since they had a heartwarming moment in this show with any of the Griffin members.  Maybe that's not what this show is about; they'd rather be "real."  I dunno.  This is one reason I like The Simpsons better overall; no matter what bad things the characters do, they show that they love each other.  Where's the love, FG??

I was grossed out a bit when Peter smashed 2 birds wiith one big stone.  Man, I can never quite get used to those sort of things in the Seth MacFarlane shows.  All of a sudden there's something bloody going on, and you have to scrunch your face together in disgust.  However, that little moment was probably one of the best things in this episode.

I also will give them credit for being creative with their cutaways.  It was nice that they showed you the script for one of them and didn't animate the scene.  That hasn't been done, as far as I know, so I enjoyed the originality.  Wasn't that funny, but it showed that the writers are always thinking.

Well, it was stupid of me to think that a guest star I liked would necessary mean a good episode.  Thanks for letting me down this week, FG.  I won't get my hopes up again.