Better The First Time

Family Guy, S10E22

There were three different stories, supposedly based on some suggestions by fans.  The first was a British version of Family Guy where Peter wanted to prove that he was related to the Queen of England.  The second was about Peter having the ability to turn anyone (and eventually anything) to Robin Williams.  The third was a story that took place entirely from Stewie's point of view.

I was expecting something pretty good from the episode since I enjoyed the first version of viewer mail stories.  However, it's hard for me to say which one I liked the best because all of them weren't that good.  It felt like they didn't try very hard to think outside of the box (which might have been a problem of them using fans' ideas if that were true) and the stories weren't as bizarre as they could have been.  They might have been limited to what they could accomplish with a story that had to be a third of the time they usually had to work with, but I still think they could have done better.

I think maybe the British version of Peter and the others was the most interesting of them all.  I liked seeing them with ridiculously bad teeth and more distinguished noses.  Plus, Brian was a horse instead of a dog, and Stewie had an American country accent instead of his usual British one.  Another interesting twist was that British Peter's random bitter enemy was not a chicken, but a quail and their fight was much shorter and ended on a more polite note than any of the Quahog Peter's fights have.  Basically this story's appeal was the funny differences between America and England.  But Peter chasing after the Queen of England and killing her in the process to get some hair for a DNA test, seemed like a pretty lame adventure for him to get into.  But perhaps that was the point--showing that British Peter can't measure up to the American one?  I don't know, but it was pretty boring.

The second story was just awful.  There is a limit to how many Robin Williams jokes I can tolerate, and I think they exceeded that within the first few minutes.  This one was more like a horror story, but not horrifically funny.  It was more like if I had to see one more Robin Williams appear, I was going to go as crazy as Peter did.  The best part was the end, surprisingly (not simply because it was ending), but because it was so disturbing.  Peter had kept 5 of the Robins and dressed them like his family.  That was so freaky and sad!  Then to make things even more so, Peter had chopped off his hands.  It was like the end to something from the Twilight Zone, but not even a fraction as enjoyable to watch.

The last story wasn't too bad, but it was just amazing how everything through Stewie's eyes wasn't more interesting.  After all, he's a baby that acts like an adult most of the time.  There were two creepy moments that worked well in the story.  The first was Quagmire asking Stewie to come over so he could see if the smell of Lois' boobs were still on him.  Geez.  There is really no low he won't go when perving on Lois.  The second is when Stewie saw Herbert hanging underneath a school bus and Stewie warned him to stay away from his brother's butt.  That was probably my favorite joke in the whole episode.  The last thing in that story I thought was a little funny was the book Lois read Stewie to bed.  It was about the town from Footloose.  I liked how Stewie wondered who the intended reader of the book was and how one line from the book referenced "the church where you slap your daughter."  That was a pretty good joke.

I was pretty disappointed that they weren't able to top the first of this kind of episode.  This was one of the last episodes in the season, I so I expected something a little more flashy and memorable.  Instead, there were just a lot of stories that felt uninspired and boring.  Mostly this was the fault of a story about an invasion of Robin Williams, but the others had their faults as well.  If this had been the last episode of the season, I would have been incredibly dissatisfied.

Peter and Brian: True Blue Friends

Family Guy, S10E17

Basically, the answer to the question that no one was probably wondering beyond Stewie was given last Sunday:  Are Peter and Brian friends of convenience or friends through and through?  Well, through the magic of science, Peter and his buddies are thrown into a world by themselves where a spoof newspaper article makes the others think that Peter is an evil, human-destroying alien.  It was very interesting to see how these four would get along if their memories were wiped and they were the sole residents of the world.  It was a little eerie in a Twilight Zone-like way and funny in the regular Family Guy way.

I think what I liked the best was when Quagmire was trying to teach Brian "gimme paw," and it took forever.  Brian contrasts his normal dog qualities by blurting out some pseudo-intelluctual crap afterwards before Quagmire tells him to shut up.  No surprise that the deep-rooted hatred that Quagmire has for Brian still manages to seep out even though they don't have their memories back.  Two other gags that I enjoyed were Peter pulling out the Chex Mix to see if anyone else was around, and the revised "Who Else But Quagmire?" joke ("Who Else But Shirt Pants?").  However, I will say that the oddity of their situation and whether the mystery would be revealed was a lot more interesting to me than the comedy in this episode.

What I didn't particularly like was the "shock" joke this time.  There was a cutaway to a gorilla petting a kitten next to a pile of dead ones it had already torn to bits.  So gross.  It's very hard for me to laugh at a dead animal or one suffering in a bloody manner.  I would have preferred that Peter had just told us that had happened rather than us having to see the death pile.

Also, I didn't much care for the ending of this episode where the girls were put in the same scenario as the guys, but all they were doing was fighting and pulling each others' hair.  Apparently they hadn't even tried to name each other.  What bullcrap.  As if women would naturally just hate each other and not work together.  I think women would fight less if men were out of the picture.  Damn you, Seth MacFarlane, and your anti-women position.  Sometimes when I stop to think about it (which I do more now that he has more than one show where I can compare the women characters he's made), it irritates me how women are represented in SF world.  But then again, it's just a cartoon.  It's nothing to march about.  Still, I wish he would have a women character who wasn't in a position where it seemed like she was ranked lower than her husband (or father).

Anyway, I was a little touched by how deep Peter and Brian's friendship turned out to be.  Brian may be an asshole most of the time, but he does love Peter, and the feeling is mutual.  Brian took a damn bullet for him.  Sometimes you might question whether Peter has a heart, but seeing his best friend die before his eyes and all the tears, you know that his love for Brian is more than that of a pet.  It's a nice change of pace because they haven't really had a moment where if you were soft-hearted enough you might just say, "Aww" while watching Family Guy.  They used to have touching family moments like this in the first season, but the eventually disregarded this for a general feeling of tolerated hatred among the family (or indifference, at best).

Although this episode reminds me a little of when Stewie killed Lois (it all turned out to be a simulation), I still thought it was good in general.  I wouldn't mind more of this style where things are unusual for a reason you can't determine right away, nor would I mind a little more sentimental stories (if not to offset all the stories where the characters are being jerks to one another).  We're fast approaching the end of this season, and I'd hate to see it end with me disliking more episodes than I liked.