No discussion on this Very Special Episode yet?
I kind of thought it was going to be a drag, what with only 2 characters and no flashbacks. But it actually worked pretty well. And that was a hell of a lot of dialog for MacFarlane.
Too many lessons and hugs at the end, though.
Pretty lame, really - the main story was watchable, but the (supposedly) deleted and not so deleted scenes weren’t particularly entertaining out of context, and I don’t think most of them would have been that great in context, either.
Simpsons was the only actually good show of the night (though the Cleveland Show did have some good moments - Junior and the other guy’s rap-off was great - it wasn’t even the best episode of the Cleveland Show, which is a fairly low bar).
My wife asked me to shut if off after Brian chowed down on the throw up and a part of me is amazed they wasted nearly 10 minutes on Stewie crapping his pants and Brian eating it.
That’s lowbrow even for Family Guy. And it doesn’t sound like it got any better.
I actually thought that the poopy/throw up part was pretty funny.
The song and dance stuff, not so much.
Never mind the clips. They were just there to fill out the odd time frame left over from the overlong episode, which I thought was great. The Brian and Stewie story was chock full of character moments and personal revelations that illuminated the characters better than the average 2 hour Hollywood movie.
The diaper stuff was just too disgusting to be funny for me. I guess now I finally know how the people who complain about the milder stuff feel.
What were they copying in the extra scene with Peter “lip-syncing” to the music? I keep thinking it was a Milton Berle sketch. I’m at least pretty sure it was something from that era. It’s driving me crazy.
From The Errand Boy, a Jerry Lewis movie from 1961.
Family Guy has had some great bits (“Can you see the wire yet? Over.”), but several recent episodes have just disgusted me. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the bank vault stuff, I quit watching because I had better things to do than watch scatalogical gay baby/animal sex. How is this getting past network censors? To me Family Guy is getting too much like Southpark, they’re just seeing how much they can get away with.
I thought it was dreadful. Utterly unfunny.
Was that the first time the word “dick” has been said in prime time other than references to Nixon?
I did a double take when he said it. It was like the first time I heard the word “bitch” on the old NBC single camera sitcom “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.”
Good episode. I skipped the singing crap. Seth McFarlane has gotten way too into the musical side of the show. When songs are good, they are brilliant. But Seth seems to through in so much of it, it waters down the good stuff. I was shocked to learn there were some musical numbers that DIDN’T make the cut!
But, hey. If we have to suffer through a dozen of Peter’s TD celebrations or Frank Sinatra Jr. duets to get one “Down Syndrome Girl” ditties, I guess it is a small price to pay.
Youtube video of this Jerry Lewis piece.
I agree that the “poop” stuff was terrible, dreadfuly disgusting and unfunny, I do understand that this was a “Brian is a dog” joke. Otherwise it was decent.
The oddest thing about the poop stuff was that it was way too early in the episode. Something like that would have to be really far along on the absurdity curve to work, but they needed it before the middle of this episode to fit the flow of the whole story. It is conceivably possible to work the poop stuff into a story, but there would have to be a lot of other ridiculous things before it to build up the comedic energy, and they would probably have to write the whole episode around that gag. I guess the lesson for writers is that you can’t just shoehorn poop eating in wherever you please. You can quote me on that.
Say what you will about the poop eating, but the thing where Stewie knew how to button/unbutton his own overalls was awfully adorable.
When they got into the whole living with purpose and living in the moment thing, it got really philosophical. Not terribly funny, but I kind of found it thought provoking. This was probably the deepest episode I’ve ever seen.
It’s not exactly the most popular show, but Supernatural (which airs on CW) has been saying “dick” for awhile now. (In fact, in a more recent episode, one character called another a “bag of dicks”)
This episode kind of fell flat for me overall. A few good moments but mostly …meh.
I really enjoyed the Brian and Stewie stuff. A lot of great touching character moments. The gross out humor neither bothered me nor delighted me.
Loved the Jerry Lewis bit. So well done. I love the original bit too, though I never knew it existed until last night.
I don’t think the diaper scene was intended as humor. Well, maybe tangentially, but not primarily. Primarily it was a setup for the exploration of their relationship. For a cartoon about a baby and a talking dog that started out with a horrifically unwatchable diaper eating scene, it was actually pretty heavy and ultimately genuinely touching. I was impressed at how much depth McFarlane could get out of his facially absurd characters and situations. It’s pretty ballsy to finish with a stark discussion of suicide and friendship when your starting point was a dog licking a baby’s butthole clean.
I went through almost the exact same scenario with the ear piercing once. My psychotic friend and I were drunk and he insisted I pierce his ear and wouldn’t leave me alone until I did it. I used a furniture nail (soaked in jack daniels to sterilize it), heated by a blowtorch. If only it were as easy as they showed it - the ear is fairly resistant to piercing, at least for something way too thick like a nail.
I thought the episode was pretty meh. Kind of awkward. Not much funny stuff, and all of the Stewie/Brian character stuff we saw we’ve all seen before, just slightly less grim.
They did musical clips and did not show “Bag of Weed”? That is the best musical clip from any show ever.