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.

What If Bart Had Failed?

The Simpsons, S24E10

To cut costs, the school with the lowest standardized test scores would be shut down, and Springfield Elementary's only hope of staying open was determinate upon Bart's score on the test.  Homer also found a parking meter at the dump and was tricking people into paying it at various locations around town.

I actually would have liked to see what became of the kids if they were sent to different, horrible schools.  Although, since Springfield is the worst school in the state, it couldn't have been worse (at least academically).  I was sort of rooting for Bart to fail, which it looked like he was going to do because he didn't put an ounce of effort into studying.  It reminded me of that very earlier episode where Bart had to study really hard to stop himself from being held back.  He studied really hard and failed, but proved that he had learned something and got a little extra credit.  In this episode, he just had pure luck, and a bug happened to fill in the last question correctly for him.  I guess that's more likely than Bart doing well on a test through his own merits.  That, short of someone dressing up like Bart and taking the test for him, was one of the few ways it was going to work to keep the school open (status quo).  Again, though, I would have liked to see the kids at a different school for a brief moment.

This story wasn't really funny, but I did find myself laughing when Bart imagined that Groundskeeper Willie was lowering a dead Skinner from a flagpole and folding him into a triangle.  That was a little twisted, but for some reason I had to laugh.  I guess it was because it was such a serious moment for Bart and he was still thinking about screwing Skinner over.  No wonder they were ready to knock down the school as soon as the test was over--Bart was so freaking unreliable.

I also liked one line from the proctor concerning the kids' test results:

This place is worse than the elementary school in prison.  This student filled in everything but the ovals.

This story really reminded me of how dumb the kids are at that school.  With kids doing the direct opposite of what they're supposed to do in a test, I'm not entirely sure it's because of the lackluster staff that teach them that they can't even fill in circles.

Homer's story was sort of cute.  I mean, there's nothing like watching Homer going around trying to scam people for a quick buck, especially if it's in a way that seems more trouble than it's worth.  It reminds me of the time he had the telemarketing scam going on--he was right that this fake parking meter was his most successful business.  The thing that was dumb was that he went to spend the money at a bus station pay-TV.  He might as well have been tossing all the money he "worked" for down a well (which he did, in a disappointing conclusion).  Then again, I guess Homer couldn't very well go around town spending quarters like that when there was a news report about his illegal activities.  Still, it would have been nice to see him do something fun with that money before Marge found out and made him do the "right" thing.

Oh, I also thought the couch gag was nice.  Usually, I just ignore it and just wish the episode would start, but I liked seeing them make them sitting on the couch see like a dramatic, action-packed movie trailer.  The tagline "Don't get too comfortable" made me laugh.

This episode was a little better than some of the others just because it wasn't very annoying in any way really.  I tend to like the stories that revolve around the school, especially when the main character is going to be Bart.  He's shown that when push comes to shove, some kind of unbelievable luck will pull him through and never any kind of effort upon his part (at least where learning is concerned) will.  Homer and his parking meter were a great pair in business, but he barely even got to enjoy the fruits from his misdeeds.  I miss Homer trying all these bad ideas to get money outside of doing his own job properly--it feels like we don't get to see him doing nearly enough of that nowadays.