Peter's Cheating Helps Their Marriage

Family Guy, S11E14

Peter got sued for stealing someone's property and the financial loss made it necessary for Lois to take up a job.  She thought she was getting an opportunity to do voice-over work, but it was only a job for phone sex.  Lois eventually got used to it, but she was shocked and hurt when Peter became one of her customers and seemed to get emotionally attached to her persona "Classy."

Somehow Lois getting into the sex industry didn't seem outrageous.  After all, being married to Peter is expensive with all of the random damages and fees that he builds up from his day-to-day mischief.  She basically needs to do whatever she can do to keep the family afloat, even if it's catering to people who need sexual relief over the phone.  Naturally, Lois didn't take too long to get the hang of it, nor even let her family know what she was doing.  I guess that's why she couldn't bust Peter right away because she would have to admit that she was doing phone sex in the first place.

As for Peter's infatuation with her over the phone, I felt like it did dance the line between cheating and being completely linked to Lois for life.  I would probably just call it a technical cheating because Peter was subconsciously falling for his own wife.  I do think it's weird that he would so quickly want to meet the woman and commit adultery, though.  Even if he felt strongly about her, he should have given it some time.  No wonder Lois wanted to fool him when he was being so impulsive about throwing their marriage away (as far as he knew).  Sure Lois was being distant lately, but that was no excuse for him to prepare to leave his family after what seem like a few phone calls.

However, I liked how Lois and Peter came to terms with the odd situation.  Sometimes, because Peter is always making jokes about Lois being old and unattractive, I forget that Peter loves Lois at all.  They have been married for over a decade, so they shouldn't be without their quarrels or complaints about one another.  Still, I liked seeing them reaffirm their feelings for each other in this story, no matter how twisted it was that Peter thought he was actually cheating on her.  For this show, it was sort of sweet that Peter fell in love with her voice and knew deep in his heart that the owner of the voice was the one that he was meant to be with.  It makes me wish that they had more sweet moments like that more often.

As for the jokes in this episode, there weren't many that I liked.  One that did work for me was when there was a cutaway to a man on a plane who decided to go back to coughing in a very annoying way when his magazine had a toenail in it.  It was funny that he grabbed a random baby and coughed in its face too.  I like how this was an exaggerated version of those types of people who seem to have coughing fits just when they happened to be trapped in a plane for a few hours.

Another that I liked was when Lois talked about Peter being in his anime phase.  It's not the first time that I've seen a cartoon poke fun at anime, but I still liked seeing Peter being drawn in a different way.  He had those too-shiny eyes and his body was all shaped like a big block.  He looked ridiculous, and I liked it.  I guess I enjoyed it because it was just so random for what was going on, like most good cutaways.

The last joke that I liked was when Peter was saying goodbye to his kids.  When he got to Chris he was unexpectedly abrupt with him:

Chris, people are gonna tell you you're stupid and that you're no good.

He totally left him hanging just like that.  Wow.  If those were the last words my father said to me, I'd be so struggling with that the rest of my life.   It was even funnier because he wasn't as mean with the other two (I mean, him farting on Meg is basically how he shows his love for her).

This was a pretty good episode.  There wasn't anything too gross and irritating about it, so I liked it a lot better than most stories I've seen.  Also, this was an unusually sweet story between Peter and Lois that involved being unfaithful.  It's strange that their night started off as Peter planning to go to bed with a woman he just met and Lois coming to see if her husband was going to go that far.  Instead of having a horrible and depressing ending, it turned out to make Peter and Lois stronger for the experience.  They may not be the sweetest couple in the cartoon world, but at least they do take the time every once in a while to remind us why the two of them have bothered to get married in the first place.