If it’s not too late to weigh in: yeah, that ep was pretty sucktastic. For one thing, it simply isn’t funny anymore to show Brits as buck-toothed pantywaists; that vein is dry, dry, dry. For another, if you’re going to have a guest star who’s a stiff, at least write him some funny stuff to do. For another thing, a song-and-dance number should have at least some comic purpose; the song Peter did was musically pretty interesting, but also pretty unfunny.
I do think that the Brian/Stewie thing worked pretty well; the Jay Leno gags were funny; and I liked Meg calling Lois a cow. I think she’s at her best when she cuts loose and treats the family as badly as they treat her.
Despite some strong episodes here and there, I’m coming to the conclusion that Family Guy has yet to fully recover from its cancellation, if it ever will; it’s either too self-conscious, with some episodes sounding like they were shot from fanscripts, or simply too weird. I hope they pull it together; they have a lot of episodes left on that contract.
Of course the new episode of The Simpsons that was on Sunday night had a very FG-esque gag where Flanders was singing some song with a bunch of color names in the lyrics (can’t remember what song it was) and you saw nothing but him going from window to window in his house watering flowerboxes and singing that song for probably 20 or 30 seconds.
Me too. Both beatings looked like something Joe Pesci (or somebody) did in a movie, blow for blow, including the kneecaps and the juice glass in the eyball. I figured a Doper would know for sure.
I liked the episode. Shipoopie was familiar but I didn’t know it was from The Music Man.