Peter's Cheating Helps Their Marriage

Family Guy, S11E14

Peter got sued for stealing someone's property and the financial loss made it necessary for Lois to take up a job.  She thought she was getting an opportunity to do voice-over work, but it was only a job for phone sex.  Lois eventually got used to it, but she was shocked and hurt when Peter became one of her customers and seemed to get emotionally attached to her persona "Classy."

Somehow Lois getting into the sex industry didn't seem outrageous.  After all, being married to Peter is expensive with all of the random damages and fees that he builds up from his day-to-day mischief.  She basically needs to do whatever she can do to keep the family afloat, even if it's catering to people who need sexual relief over the phone.  Naturally, Lois didn't take too long to get the hang of it, nor even let her family know what she was doing.  I guess that's why she couldn't bust Peter right away because she would have to admit that she was doing phone sex in the first place.

As for Peter's infatuation with her over the phone, I felt like it did dance the line between cheating and being completely linked to Lois for life.  I would probably just call it a technical cheating because Peter was subconsciously falling for his own wife.  I do think it's weird that he would so quickly want to meet the woman and commit adultery, though.  Even if he felt strongly about her, he should have given it some time.  No wonder Lois wanted to fool him when he was being so impulsive about throwing their marriage away (as far as he knew).  Sure Lois was being distant lately, but that was no excuse for him to prepare to leave his family after what seem like a few phone calls.

However, I liked how Lois and Peter came to terms with the odd situation.  Sometimes, because Peter is always making jokes about Lois being old and unattractive, I forget that Peter loves Lois at all.  They have been married for over a decade, so they shouldn't be without their quarrels or complaints about one another.  Still, I liked seeing them reaffirm their feelings for each other in this story, no matter how twisted it was that Peter thought he was actually cheating on her.  For this show, it was sort of sweet that Peter fell in love with her voice and knew deep in his heart that the owner of the voice was the one that he was meant to be with.  It makes me wish that they had more sweet moments like that more often.

As for the jokes in this episode, there weren't many that I liked.  One that did work for me was when there was a cutaway to a man on a plane who decided to go back to coughing in a very annoying way when his magazine had a toenail in it.  It was funny that he grabbed a random baby and coughed in its face too.  I like how this was an exaggerated version of those types of people who seem to have coughing fits just when they happened to be trapped in a plane for a few hours.

Another that I liked was when Lois talked about Peter being in his anime phase.  It's not the first time that I've seen a cartoon poke fun at anime, but I still liked seeing Peter being drawn in a different way.  He had those too-shiny eyes and his body was all shaped like a big block.  He looked ridiculous, and I liked it.  I guess I enjoyed it because it was just so random for what was going on, like most good cutaways.

The last joke that I liked was when Peter was saying goodbye to his kids.  When he got to Chris he was unexpectedly abrupt with him:

Chris, people are gonna tell you you're stupid and that you're no good.

He totally left him hanging just like that.  Wow.  If those were the last words my father said to me, I'd be so struggling with that the rest of my life.   It was even funnier because he wasn't as mean with the other two (I mean, him farting on Meg is basically how he shows his love for her).

This was a pretty good episode.  There wasn't anything too gross and irritating about it, so I liked it a lot better than most stories I've seen.  Also, this was an unusually sweet story between Peter and Lois that involved being unfaithful.  It's strange that their night started off as Peter planning to go to bed with a woman he just met and Lois coming to see if her husband was going to go that far.  Instead of having a horrible and depressing ending, it turned out to make Peter and Lois stronger for the experience.  They may not be the sweetest couple in the cartoon world, but at least they do take the time every once in a while to remind us why the two of them have bothered to get married in the first place.

Same Old Story Again

The Cleveland Show, S04E11

Cleveland voluntarily took a severance package and quit his job, but kept it secret from Donna and had fun spending the money while only pretending to use that time to find a new job.  Roberta and Federline broke up, and Rallo was happy to see Roberta start dating a black guy until he found out that Devon was too strict and boring.

I can't say what's much different in this story about Donna and Cleveland compared to most stories about the two of them.  Cleveland does something wrong and enjoys himself in the meantime before Donna figures out that he's been lying through his teeth.  This formula for a story isn't unique to this show (Homer Simpson does it on a regular basis, as well), but what I dislike about when Cleveland chooses to do it is that he usually does it for selfish reasons.  It's not that he wanted to save himself from embarrassment or felt not so confident about finding another job, but he just didn't want Donna to make him do chores or whatever around the house (and he probably didn't want to have to use the money on his family).  I was surprised at first that he was going to tell Donna exactly what he had done at work until he used the time-rewinding technique from Superman (I don't know which one).  Unlike when I had seen Stan Smith use this on American Dad, Cleveland successfully went back in time to prevent himself from letting Donna spoil his fun.  I wish that Cleveland had only imagined he had done it, like Stan (I don't much like that they used the same reference like that).

Also, per usual to this setup, Cleveland's deception was revealed through his own carelessness and stupidity.  Much like when he was pretending to be homeless, he was too busy having a good time to remember that he shouldn't dine in the same restaurant his wife was working in.  I guess since Cleveland will never be the type to admit what he did wrong without being caught in the act first, we have to wait for his lies to catch up with him.  I wish they had caught up sooner--he wasn't doing anything that exciting with all that money.  He then spun the situation to look like he was going to end his life due to the hopelessness of the current job market, making him look even more like a selfish ass.   It would have been a great lesson to him if Donna had won in the end when she punched him off of the ledge.  Instead, Cleveland's seemingly joke to sue Donna wasn't a lie at all, and the money that he won in that settlement allowed him to return things back to status quo.  I didn't like that ending.  I hate when Cleveland appears to win in the end when he was the one doing wrong all along.  Unless they can do that in a very humorous way, which wasn't achieved this time, I'd rather see him get his just desserts.

There was only about one thing I liked about this story and that was when Clevleand was making some speech on the ledge to the "unemployed hippies."  He was getting a little long-winded and Rallo shouted out:

Wrap it up!

I had to laugh at that because the time was perfect and the sentiment was apt.  Cleveland was just having another bullshitting session that wasn't important in the least.  If only Donna could have gotten up  there sooner to knock him off.

The side story involved Rallo, but sadly he wasn't put to good use.  The focus was mainly on how Ferdeline reverted back to his non-poser self (a sight that was a bit eerie for some reason) and how Devon sucked the fun out of Rallo's life.  The latter should have been decently funny, but it wasn't.  I guess because there wasn't anything more to Devon than following the rules and reforming Rallo.  I actually didn't even feel like he was dating Roberta--it was more like he was Rallo's 24-7 babysitter.  I might have found Rallo's situation funnier if he complained to someone about Devon, but they didn't believe he was an unpleasant guy.  Instead, it just became clearer and clearer than Devon was as about as fun as counting blades of grass.  He was making Rallo's life hell, but to me it wasn't anything personal, so it didn't tickle my funny bone.  Also, Rallo didn't have any chances to turn the tables on Devon or anything.  He just had to get Federline back.  As much as I dislike Federline, he's the lesser of two evils, I guess.

This episode made me feel like I was watching a different but similar episode with just a few of the pieces changed.  I'd like to see Cleveland have more times where his lies seemed necessary rather than a reflection of him protecting his own best interests.  I would have also liked to see Rallo get more revenge on Devon than bringing back Federline to take his place.  While it's better to have Federline at Roberta's side than Devon, I would have ultimately preferred a story without the two of them in the first place.

Cupcake Bitches Versus The Serial Killer Puppeteer

2 Broke Girls, S02E17

Max had a great idea to rename her cupcakes to bring in a lot of hipster customers into their shop, but a puppeteer performing outside of their business was driving people away.  After trying to convince J.Petto to move his puppetry show somewhere else, he ended coming into the cupcake shop and slipping on a cupcake.  His fall broke his favorite puppet, Pierre, and Max and Caroline soon found themselves being sued by the man for damages to it.

The girls versus Andy Dick as this nutty puppeteer was sort of funny.  From the beginning he was a little off, and the girls had a hard time dealing with him.  I knew with his crazy behind the girls wouldn't be rid of him so easily, but I didn't think that he would try and sue them.  I can't believe that they had to pay him a grand to try and shut him up.  Of course, since he wasn't living a fabulous lifestyle, it wasn't a surprise that once Caroline and Max paid him, he wanted more.  He was being a greedy jerk, but I couldn't hate him because seeing him in his apartment filled with puppets (the "dead body car wash" as Max put it), I couldn't help but pity him.  He didn't have anyone but his freaky little puppets.

I didn't know if the girls could get out of the situation until I saw Max take Pierre hostage.  She shocked me by going further and making the puppet hump with some naked dolls.  I loved that this was enough to make J.Petto cave into them.  They were pretty smart to use that disturbing display as a threat to his business.  I'm pretty sure that people would want to avoid him knowing that he was going around using his puppets in some kind of sexual play.  I liked how much that got to J.Petto.  Serves his money-grubbing ass right.

What I liked best about this episode, though, was just Max calling J.Petto a serial killer.  She kept alluding to the fact that they were getting closer and closer to ending up as his victims.  It made J.Petto seem all the more unbalanced and funny that they kept getting more and more involved with him.  I halfway expected Max to be right in the end.  That would have been a hilarious ending (providing they didn't get hurt, of course).

I liked this episode, even though I'm not much of an Andy Dick fan.  However, I think that his role as an annoying puppeteer really suited him, and he made an entertaining adversary to the girls.  However, he did make them lose a grand for nearly nothing more than a lesson about the necessity of having a friend to tell you when you're wasting your life on a bad idea.  If that's all he's going to add to the value of the show, I really hope that his appearance is just a one-shot.