Peter and Lois as Cinderella and Prince Charming in Family Guy
By
Ben Sherlock
Published 23 minutes ago
Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.
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Family Guy has done a lot of three-part anthology-style episodes over the years. The series has been relying on the format more and more in recent seasons, and it’s easy to see why. These anthology episodes are joke machines, so they suit Family Guy’s “jokes first, story and character development second” approach.
The show has done anthologies of Stephen King stories, HBO shows, music biopics, dream jobs, and Biblical passages. These anthologies account for some of Family Guy’s best episodes, but they also account for some of its worst.
Rock Hard
Stewie and Brian as Elton John and Bernie Taupin in Family Guy
Music biopics are ripe for parody, especially since they’ve become a dime a dozen in the past decade, but “Rock Hard” is Family Guy’s weakest anthology episode. Props to the writers for picking three very different movies to spoof — The Doors, Green Book, and Rocketman — allowing them to satirize a wide range of musical genres and cinematic tropes.
But the laughs are simply few and far between. There’s basically one joke in each segment: The Doors parody makes fun of Jim Morrison’s hippie lifestyle; the Green Book parody makes fun of the film’s fairytale racial harmony; and the Rocketman parody flips Elton John’s relationship with his dad. You need more than three jokes to sustain a half-hour of television.
A Real Who's Hulu
Peter as Carmy Berzatto in Family Guy
Three seasons after doing an anthology episode spoofing HBO shows, Family Guy went back to that well and spoofed three more shows, this time from the Hulu library. Hulu has a much less distinctive identity as a brand than HBO, and there was a lot less passion in “A Real Who’s Hulu” than “HBO-No!” Family Guy is on Hulu, so the whole thing feels like an ad.
The first two segments are actually pretty great. The Only Murders in the Building spoof makes some genuinely sharp observations about the show, and The Dropout spoof has the delightfully surreal running gag that Elizabeth Holmes’ fraudulent diagnostic machine is a “Which Sopranos Character Are You?” quiz.
The episode is let down by its third and final segment, satirizing The Bear. The joke is that none of the writers have seen The Bear, so they don’t know what they’re spoofing, and that gets old instantly.
Love Story Guy
Quagmire in a parody of Cast Away in Family Guy
The guys recount the stories of their first true love in “Love Story Guy.” The first two segments are pitch-perfect parodies of classic romance movies — the first part puts Quagmire in Cast Away and the second part puts Joe in Dirty Dancing — but, much like “A Real Who’s Hulu,” the episode falls apart in its third segment.
The third segment is a misguided mishmash of Mannequin, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and Meg Ryan’s many great romcoms. Peter steps through the screen into When Harry Met Sally, then races through Ryan’s entire filmography. That last segment is a mess, and it brings down the whole episode.
Take This Job And Love It
Quagmire doing aerobics in Family Guy
Peter and the guys imagine their dream jobs in “Take This Job and Love It.” Peter imagines himself as a James Bond superspy, Quagmire imagines himself as the star of an aerobics video series in the ‘80s, and Joe and Cleveland imagine themselves as a pair of Lethal Weapon-style wisecracking L.A.P.D. detectives.
There are some great gags poking fun at blockbuster movie tropes in Peter’s story and a few pointed jabs at ‘80s culture in Quagmire’s story, but there’s nothing unifying this anthology into a cohesive whole. It starts out examining vocations and unfulfilled ambitions, but none of the stories themselves are actually about that.
Holly Bibble
The Last Supper in Family Guy
“Holly Bibble” is a rare case where the framing device is more memorable than any of the actual anthology segments. The framing device sees the Griffins cooped up in a motel room during a hurricane, and it’s chock-full of memorable moments: Brian tied up in the flooded yard, fellow motel guests making a scene in the parking lot.
The actual anthology sees Peter reading from the motel room’s Bible. He recounts three key passages: Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, and The Last Supper. The religious satire isn’t as biting as Family Guy fans are used to, the episode doesn’t really have anything new to say, and the three anthology segments are less interesting than the device that frames them.
Heart Burn
Peter and Lois as Romeo and Juliet in Family Guy
Peter and Lois spend their anniversary retelling three famous love stories with themselves in the lead roles in “Heart Burn.” First, they play Paris and Helen of Troy, then they play Romeo and Juliet, and finally, they do a wonderfully absurd remake of Fatal Attraction in which Lois plays both the wife and the mistress.
There are great components in all three of these stories. The Troy story has a fun meta layer with Peter being disappointed that Disney won’t let them use Hercules characters. The Fatal Attraction story has a lot of great material with Stewie as the kid and Brian as his pet rabbit.
Family Guy Viewer Mail #2
British version of the Griffins in Family Guy
A full seven seasons after the first one, we finally got another “Family Guy Viewer Mail” episode. The season 3 original acted as a “Treehouse of Horror”-style non-canonical installment exploring wild what-if scenarios, under the guise of taking ideas and suggestions from fan mail. The first one is an early classic, but the second one was a bit disappointing.
The first segment, imagining Family Guy as a remake of a classic British sitcom, just plays on tired, overdone UK stereotypes. The only solid gag in that whole story is Stewie having a thick southern U.S. accent to flip his usual English affectation on its head. The second segment, turning the entire town into Robin Williams, is needlessly cruel to a legend.
The third and final sequence, showing us a typical day-in-the-life from Stewie’s P.O.V., saves the episode. It’s a refreshing change of pace to see the world through Stewie’s eyes, and it has some really great gags.
Tales Of Former Sports Glory
Peter as a boxer in Family Guy
Peter and the guys imagine themselves as sporting legends in “Tales of Former Sports Glory.” The episode mocks real-world sports, sports biopics, and fictional sports movies. Cleveland recalls his early life as an immigrant baseball prodigy, Quagmire recalls his budding tennis career, and Peter imagines himself as a Rocky Balboa-style folk-hero boxer.
Quagmire’s story is the most memorable, if only for Family Guy’s signature shock humor (tennis ball can lids routinely cut off limbs in this segment, and one of Quagmire’s disastrous serves is implied to have caused 9/11). But there’s a lot of good stuff in all three segments.
Oscars Guy
Stewie as Hannibal Lecter in Family Guy
“Oscars Guy” parodies three Best Picture winners from the ‘90s: The Silence of the Lambs, Forrest Gump, and American Beauty. They’re three of the most widely discussed, frequently parodied movies ever made, so there wasn’t much more for Family Guy to say about them. But, miraculously, the episode still finds some fresh juice in that tank.
When Forrest is running back and forth across the country, Peter makes a pretty astute observation: “Sometimes, this whole movie feels like it was written by a seven-year-old who just ate a bunch of candy.” The American Beauty spoof points out that the climax is unearned, the sexual misunderstandings are almost Austin Powers-esque, and the message about heteronormative suburban dysfunction is really heavy-handed.
Grimm Job
Peter as Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk in Family Guy
As Stewie struggles to get to sleep in “Grimm Job,” Peter reads him three fairytales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, and Cinderella. The first story makes a great point about the giant’s fee-fi-fo-fum nonsense, and the second story is a delightfully unhinged reimagining pointing out the bleak realities of Red Riding Hood, but the third story steals the show.
This episode saves the best segment until last. Family Guy’s Cinderella spoof pokes fun at the Disney version of the story, not the original fairytale, but it gets particularly brutal at the end when Peter reveals what became of Cinderella’s relationship with Prince Charming: “They got into a huge fight when his mom got sick, and now they don’t even follow each other on Twitter.”
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Family Guy
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