Stewie Versus Sheldon

Family Guy, S11E06

Lois started acting like a 20-year old after Peter gave a speech at her birthday party that compared her to an old horse.  Peter was enjoying the perks of having a "younger wife" until he couldn't keep up with Lois' wild new behavior.  Stewie also got a new pet turtle who turned out to be stirring up trouble and trying to murder him.

This is far from the first time that Peter has mentioned in a not so tactful way that Lois is getting older.  So I didn't really have much of an reaction to his insensitive speech because that's what Peter does all the time.  I also didn't feel too surprised that Lois handled the problem in an extreme way because she's shown many times that she has a wild side.  The best part of the story besides when Peter decided to stop being a dick and appreciate Lois for the mature woman she has become was just seeing Peter so ragged from hanging out with Lois night after night.  He was having fun with her new attitude until his old body couldn't keep up.  Serves his ass right.  I could have been completely pleased with this story had Peter not went back to his regular jerk of a self by telling Lois to get out because she was older than 35.  There are only so many times I can watch a husband give shit to his wife about being old before the joke because tired and annoying.  We're definitely at that point by now.

Also, in that story, there was another cutaway to a Conway Twitty video.  I groaned more than usual to see the return of this gag because he was sporting some Bieber hair this time.  I don't know if it was because it was digitally altered so badly that I was annoyed or just annoyed that they would even try to put that on him.  Either way, it wasn't funny and I'm over those Conway Twitty jokes too.

The best part of the episode was definitely that Stewie had taken in Sheldon.  We don't know why the turtle was so damn evil, but it was pretty hilarious is a creepy way.  I would have never expected a little thing like that to be knocking over bookshelves and snapping seagulls' necks.  You would think that with Stewie being a bit of an evil person himself that he and the turtle would get along great, but I guess that just gave them a reason to have a fight.  I liked that Stewie was nearly bested by Sheldon (of all the people he's managed to defeat and a little turtle takes him down??), but at the end Super Mario appears out of nowhere and stomps on Sheldon.  And that was it.  Because it was Mario and very random, I had to laugh and enjoy that convenient conclusion to their fight.  Actually, that was the best ending I could think of.  After all, either Stewie or Sheldon would have had to kill the other.  I'm sure it wouldn't have ended up being funnier than a plumber dropping down on the turtle.  I just wonder if non-Mario fans liked that ending, though.

There were a few cutaways that I liked.  The first was when Stewie, as a king, was being mocked by a court jester and his response to the jester was unexpected:

In my office.  Now.

I had thought he might say off with his head or something, but instead his reply was much more contemporary, so it was a good joke to me.

Another good cutaway was when Lois was being tricked by Peter with a fake grocery store.  I don't know why, but when she knocked it over and was just standing around in the middle of nowhere with these huge cutouts, including the clerk who had just been talking to her, I started laughing.  I guess the idea of someone going to such trouble to fool someone (and someone falling for said trick) was just too ridiculous to imagine.

The third cutaway I liked stared Johnny Depp in his popular role of Edward Scissorhands.  You knew that as soon as he held that baby that it wasn't going to end well, but it still managed to be funny.  Especially since it was the actual actor and he was saying all these assuring things before he came back in the room immediately to tell the couple that their baby was dead.  How sick, but how nice to see them referencing one of my favorite Johnny Depp movies.

The only other thing I thought was kinda funny was when Stewie received Rupert's head in a box and then got an additional box with a stranger's head in it.  I just liked how Stewie was clueless of the guy's identity and indifferent to his death.  I don't know what Sheldon was trying to achieve with that.

I liked this episode.  For a story where Peter was making Lois feel shitty, it didn't make me that angry, so I was able to enjoy the comedy of it all.  I loved seeing Stewie fight a new pet and just watching that sinister turtle walking slowly around doing devious things.  I'm almost a little disappointed that Mario got him because I would love a round two.  Sheldon would make an excellent rival to Stewie in the same way that Chicken is to Peter (except not nearly as frustrating to watch).

Everybody Hates Schmidt

New Girl, S02E04

Jess began to hang out with some kids that had just moved in, but didn't seem to like Schmidt because he was too old.  Winston worried about not having very long left to live.  Nick became obsessed with pranking Schmidt, especially in making him feel like he was getting older by the second.

It's funny what manages to ruffle Winston's feathers, and this time it was Schmidt's actuarial.  I mean, he really took that thing to heart, despite he thought at first it told him he should have died about 4 years ago.  Of the 3 guys, I would guess that Winston would live the longest because Nick both fails to take care of himself and is prone to stupid decisions, while Schmidt just seems like someone who would end up being stabbed or shot one day.  Still, I guess Winston freaking out about his life running short did inspire him to not so very eloquently demand that he be given a promotion at work.  Although he has his own show, it's at a graveyard time slot, so it's almost a non-promotion, but hey, he's at least taking a step forward.  I think that will end up being a very interesting new job for him.

Nick, on the other hand, was letting his insanity sink him further into debt because he wasted over a grand playing pranks on Schmidt!  What the hell??  One of the most elaborate was when Schmidt noticed that his height line was higher than his current height.  I was shocked at the detail he put into that when he explained it to Jess:

I took a photo of the wall, shrunk it down, made a copy at an architect’s office.  From there, it was just your basic spackle-and-silkscreen job.

Seriously??  I've never seen Nick put so much energy and work into something, and when he does it has to be something spiteful.  He is so crazy!  And Winston is also crazy because he doesn't know how to prank adequately.  I don't which is funnier:  the fact that he goes too small (like sprinkling dust near Schmidt's car) or goes too big (hitting people with skis or throwing acid on them).  I'm actually a lot more concerned about Winston attempting a prank than Nick.  Nick will bankrupt himself playing his tricks, but Winston is likely to kill you.

Finally, in the Jess and Schmidt story, it was a treat to see those kids looking upon Schmidt like an unwanted growth.  But I think when Schmidt first caught on that he was hated and had to pretend he had work so he could refuse the kids' invitation to hang, I did feel bad for him.  No one wants to be the unpopular guy, so I couldn't help but want Schmidt to somehow win them over.  But it was pretty funny in general watching Jess being treated like the coolest person in the world, while Schmidt, with all of his bad slang and nonsense hype, got nowhere.  I also loved when Nick said that nothing about Schmidt being hated was new:

If I had a dollar for everybody I couldn’t hang out with because they hated Schmidt, I’d be rich.  Like, fill my gas tank all the way up rich.

I wasn't too surprised that even when Jess tried to help him that Schmidt still failed because he was just trying too hard.  But what I really liked is that Jess came clean about stealing catchphrases from 80s sitcoms and realized that she wasn't really identifying with those kids, but had already grown as a person beyond them.  But the kids still liked her and wanted to hang with her.  Aww.  I like when people like Jess because she is sweet and fun, but sometimes people don't like her because she does things her own way and is overly awkward in the most simple situations (and is the victim of bad luck).  It really shows that interacting with younger people is what she was born to do.

 This was a great episode.  I wonder if Jess will continue to see her new neighbors every now and then--I think they could add a little more crazy situations in their apartment building.  I'm pretty sure Winston's little show is going to make his job even more interesting or probably make him go insane with the strange work hours.  Don't really care what happens with Schmidt right now, but I'd like to see Nick not do anything else to throw the money he doesn't have away.  Nick would be living in an alley right now if he didn't have his friends.

Kill The Kids, Steal The Corpse's Hair

American Dad, S07E11

I liked this episode better than the other FOX shows last Sunday.  It was about Stan getting older in a fashion that reminder me of the movie Thinner.  There was also a side story about Francine and Roger, involving lies and a funeral.

Stan lays on some ageist remarks on one of his coworkers, Ray, whom he has stolen a job from.  Although he was being a jerk, I liked that he chastised Ray for cooking a sponge in the microwave because he thought it was a hot pocket.  He even turned it over in between.  I love a good hot pocket joke.

Stan gets cursed at the hiking goods store after he makes horrible remarks to the older man holding up the line.  I enjoyed the gradual aging of Stan.  He was particularly funny when he went to the doctor and thought he had aids because he couldn't understand the doctor saying "aged."  He looked so bad as an old man, especially when he went to work in some sagging jeans in order to look younger.  Those whitey tighties were not flattering on him one bit.

Halley figures out that the curse said upon Stan was in Latin, but it was Claus who knew what it meant.  That would have seemed odd to me except he explained it.  Still, that fish is pretty useless on a regular basis.  Sometimes I think Roger is enough of an oddity (they have to have one in the Seth MacFarlane shows) to add the weird element to their family.  Claus also gives Stan the idea that to break the curse he has to complete his dream of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro as an old man.  I thought from the beginning that it wouldn't work.  And it doesn't.

Although it seems ridiculous to have a man who has aged to about 80 or 90 by then travel overseas and climb a mountain, this part is the best segment of the episode.  Stan mistakenly thinks that Halley and Steve are going to kill him, so he decides to get to them first.  The gag was that each time he tried to get them, he would fall asleep mid-attack.  I loved it.  I also liked how Halley and Steve kept talking to him in a condescending tone and referred to him as "Papa."  So cute it made me laugh.

Stan finally succeeds in staying awake to attack them and chases them with a knife all the way up the mountain.  That's pretty ridiculous even for a cartoon.  Wouldn't he get tired, despite his murderous desire to off his children, climbing up there with no break??  Halley "luckily" falls off before Stan can get her again, but Steve gets a knife right in his back!  I was wondering how in the world they would survive all that.  Some random guys just collected them and carried them down.  The other thing that made me go "really?" was when Stan fell off the mountain for the longest time.  He was fine after that fall!  There's no way that the ox he rode down until it was just a bloody head saved him from breaking some bones.  An old man fell from a mountain that a young man would have surely died from.  Geez...  That bothered me.

Anyway, Stan broke the curse after a younger man treated him like Stan had treated the man from the store and learned his lesson.  However, he turned into a black Stan.  Uh...what?  He apparently was cursed by someone else at a different time.  So why did the curses bundle together and happen in this weird sequence?  After he cures this one, will he turn into someone else that he treated badly?  Maybe into Claus?  Well, I guess that it's funny on a non-laughable level to end the episode like that.

In the side story, Francine is tricked by Roger over and over again.  It was really dumb, but since it was Roger, you can't be shocked.  However, I didn't know what Roger's angle was from the first time he told Francine he hadn't been "entirely truthful" with her.  I did think from the moment I saw him in that horrible red wig, couldn't he get a better one?  He commented on it soon after my thoughts that it looked like "Garfield had miscarried" on his head.  Ugh.

After many lies that put Francine in an awkward situation with a dead body, Roger reveals his plan all along was to steal his ex-wife's red hair to make a wig.  So he married her and divorced her, in order to steal her hair some day?  I guess for him that would mean nothing since he doesn't appear to age at all.  Also, he doesn't give a damn about manipulating people, as was clear with Francine.  I was happy to see that Francine threw him off a cliff after all the shit he had put her through.  6 months of practicing for a dance competition that didn't exist and defiling a dead woman's body??  Roger's fall was too kind for him.

Very nice episode this week.  I wish the other shows would have had a little more intrigue, though.  One show doesn't make up for a disappointing Sunday.