Everyone Has A Story, But Not A Good One

Family Guy, S11E12

The show did a parody of the movie Valentine's Day, and showed different stories about each of the characters on this holiday.  Lois and Peter spent the day in bed, Quagmire got turned into a woman, Meg went out with a boy she met online, Stewie went back in time to the Summer of Love, Stewie gathered together all of Brian's ex girlfriends to find out what Brian's problem was, Herbert helped his grand-niece talk to Chris, and Mayor West found out Carol was seeing another mayor.

I enjoyed the beginning of this episode that was made to be like a trailer of the movie they were spoofing.  It's nothing new, but I still like this setup each time I see in a show (usually, anyway).  One of my favorite parts of that was when it said "Comes more evidence of Family Guy's decline."  I tend to like their ironic jokes like that.

There were a lot of stories packed into one episode, but none of them were particularly great.  The top ones for me were Stewie's story, Brian's story, and Meg's story.  If I had to pick the most interesting of those three, it would be Meg's simply because it was a good story for her when you consider how most of Meg's romantic endeavors go.

Meg's date seemed to be going well at the beginning, which could only mean that something bad had to happen.  However, Meg turned lemons into lemonade when she didn't want to end her date just because she was down a kidney and bleeding everywhere.  Talk about low standards/desperation.  I was happy, though, to see that Meg had a pretty great day with Toby.  They had lunch, went ice skating, got caricatures done (Meg was drawn as a pile of poo, but I could let that slide), she got her kidney back as a present, and she got a kiss.  Toby is a criminal, for sure, but at least he's sort of a gentleman (though he is kinda gross using a dead, shriveled conjoined twin as a bookmark--eww).  Sadly, Meg couldn't do much better than him, but at least he seemed genuinely into her.  I liked seeing Meg have a relatively happy end for once, instead of her looking like a pathetic psycho.

Stewie's story where he kissed his own mother as a baby wasn't surprising (as I figured it might be her), but it does speak to the idea that Stewie has a lot of mother issues.  He already has this desire to dispose of her (though not so much lately), and now he has to deal with the fact he's a little attracted to her.  It just makes me wonder how messed up Stewie is going to be when he finally gets to puberty.

I thought that Brian's story, while grabbing my attention more than others, was a waste of time.  I don't know why Stewie would think he needed to gather all of Brian's exes to know what the problem with Brian is.  It's basically everything with Brian is wrong.  Stewie's been there through all of his failures, most of them fizzling out because Brian's ego got in the way or his mountain of lies finally collapsed.  I couldn't imagine any of them saying something redeeming about Brian because he's always been the worst lover/boyfriend.  Hopefully Stewie was really just gathering them for his own amusement to make fun of Brian's many shortcomings.   Or perhaps he knew that the riot of exes he sent after Brian would help him end up in bed with a bunch of different girls.  I surely didn't expect that.  That was the biggest surprise out of all the stories.  More random to me than Quagmire turning into a woman.  Don't know why anyone in their right mind would sleep with an asshole like Brian.

This episode was only okay because I thought it was going to be good since I enjoy spoofs.  The stories weren't terrible, but they definitely could have been funnier.  I appreciate that they didn't do a single Valentine's story and tried to do several.  It just would have been a bonus if most of the stories were really memorable and a little less uneventful.

The Simpsons Redo The Big Apple

The Simpsons, S024E01

To start off their 24th season, the Simpsons returned to New York City so that Bart could find Mary.  He was determined to find at least one of his ex-loves who still liked him after getting to know him.  Lisa and Marge also tried to see a play in the city, but eventually had to settle with doing a play themselves.

Well, I didn't like much about this episode, especially since it was sort of a repeat story in a way.  I mean, we already had a story with Mary not too long ago, while the Simpsons going to New York isn't that exciting (although, we have to give them a little slack with that because they've traveled a ton of places already).  They did have the opportunity to do the town a new justice, but it fell flat with few jokes that made it seem like they couldn't have just done the same thing anywhere else.  It was nice to see a story about Bart that wasn't about his mischief but him wanting to find acceptance instead, but that aspect wasn't enough to save the story for me.  And the side story where Marge and Lisa were searching to watch a play didn't do much for me either.

Despite my complaints, there were a few moments that I liked.  In particular, I enjoyed when Homer was explaining to Bart about how drunk dialing allows one to express feeling,s and he later drunk dialed him.  Later, when Bart is revisiting his past girlfriends and such, that wasn't entirely unfunny either.  I forget the girl's name, but I liked the part where he saw the black-haired girl who sends Bart mixed signals.  She might be one of my favorites even though she was quite bipolar in how she would treat Bart from second to second.  I also was a little tickled by Homer's recollection of what happened the last time he went to New York, and it showed him in some jazz bar or something playing a xylophone.  It was referencing something I didn't get, but I just like how it went totally against what I thought Homer would picture.

Besides these moments, my favorite was when Homer and some random people from the subway were in the cab and the driver told them:

Anything you leave in the cab, you'll never see again.

and Homer was trying to leave Bart in there was he was still sleeping.  I expected him to do this, but it was still funny that he was sneaking out of the cab before Bart woke up and saw him.  Wish there were more jokes like that.

Finally, I also think that Homer helped me enjoy the episode a little better when he talking to Bart after he arrived at Mary's apartment but she wasn't home:

You've learned a very valuable life lesson, boy.  Which is that love doesn't exist except briefly between a man and woman before marriage.  After that it's just hanging out with someone who kinda hates you but you can't get it together to leave .

As far as Bart's romance with Mary, I found it surprisingly very boring.  I'm not sure why, but it might have to do with the fact that Mary just so easily accepted Bart for who he was.  I dunno.  I guess I didn't feel their connection.  Nor was I thrilled or amused that Zoey Deschanel was a guest actress.  Her song, too, was terrible.  I long for the days where I loved the songs on this show.  But I gotta accept that it's a new era of this show.

I'd say this premiere was a little of a let down.  Since I watched it instead of Once Upon A Time (which I was thoroughly looking forward to), I feel like it was a mistake.  However, I'm just so used to spending Sunday nights watching the FOX cartoon lineup that it just seems wrong not to tune in.  However, if this is an indication of what season 24 is going to be like, I might have to catch up on this show the following day instead.  Next time they are showing Treehouse of Horrors already.  I'm thoroughly surprised, considering that sometimes we don't get to see it until November!  The previews don't look that promising, but I'll still hope they manage to have a decent Halloween special this year.