Maybe Meg Should Have Let Peter Die

Family Guy, S10E18

Peter's newest adventure was to start his own children's show to fill the void made by his recently favorite show, Jolly Farms.  His show was certainly not anything close to being appropriate for children (with Peter at the head, it was more like for teenagers who never matured from grade school), but it was popular enough to incite a mob of kids to attack Lois after seeing her mocked on the show as a puppet.  After being treated so badly, Lois threw in the towel with warning him against stupidly dangerous things until Peter tried a comedy bit with a puma.  If it hadn't been for Meg who had shadowed Dr. Hartman, Peter would have died.  No one acknowledged that, mind you, and Peter and Lois came to an understanding about her nagging.

It was cute when Peter and Stewie seemed to be bonding over Jolly Farms.  I got my hopes up that they would be friends again like they were in another episode, but Peter's attention zeroed in on just the show itself.  I suppose him getting on TV again and acting like an ass was better than him doing something silly (and funnier) with his youngest son.  What a waste.  Peter basically does his own selfish thing 70% of the time.  Usually to spite Lois.

Also, it was a waste to see Meg learning under Dr. Hartman.  Not because he is such an incompetent doctor, but because Meg had a story where she gained enough medical skills to be useful in an emergency situation, but they refused to give her any credit for that.  I wouldn't mind if they praised Meg for just a second and then treated her like dirt as usual, but no one was even going to mention what Meg did at the end if she hadn't brought it up herself.  Even for Peter's family, that is low.  Why even bother to have a mini Meg story at all if you're going to pretend she's invisible in the end?  Just take the damn story out and have Peter rescued by the puma or something else idiotic.  Since it obviously didn't matter who prevented his death.

My favorite joke of the episode was the one about Evites.  I've never used that (nor had anyone send me one, thankfully), but I appreciated their overtone of how annoying and frivolous their service seems to be.  I really liked the jingle for it:

Tell a friend and then kill yourself.

 It's hard to be generally entertained when the theme of the story is "screw you, Lois!" and Peter is acting too much like an ass for me to ignore it and just have fun with it.  We really needed more of Peter's friends in the episode, and Brian and Stewie are always welcome.  What we don't need are the kind of episodes where Peter is off being a dick by himself basically--those usually have the least comedy.  And seriously, don't use Meg unless you're ready to admit she's not a ghost or something.  I'm getting tired of the "Meg is a worthless pariah" joke.