One of the most irreverent and overtly raw shows on network television these days is Family Guy. Family Guy’s fan base is huge, almost as big as its naysayers, and when the show went off the air in 2002, it only took three years of incredible DVD sales and Adult Swim ratings to get it back. One of the keys to the Family Guy formula is to take key points from 80 years of popular culture and poke fun and lampoon.
The list of awesome Family Guy episodes is huge, but when you have 75 episodes to go, where do you start (that’s, of course, if you decide not to watch each episode five times). Some of the best episodes in the Family Guy archive are those that take the most voracious attitude toward what they satirize. Without further ado, the top five satirical episodes of Family Guy
1. There’s Something About Paulie – Season 2. In this mobster mentality dispatch where Peter enlists to see Big Fat Paulie, a mafia relative from Jersey, is taken care of during his visit to Quahog, when he accidentally gets Paulie to He hit Lois. Chaos ensues, ending with the wedding of the best man’s daughter and a tiramisu. Classic family-man humor with some solid sides.
2. Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington – Season 3. Peter is almost fired after missing work to attend a baseball game. The El Dorado Cigarette Company buys the business and he is lucky to keep his job. He’s sent to Washington as a tobacco lobbyist, where he finally sees his misbehavior after Stewie starts smoking and has a shuddering cough. Classic shipments of political culture and movies ensue. Attacks on Bob Dole, Martha Stewart and the presidential candidates Gore and Bush.
3. From Method to Insanity: Stewie joins an acting school where he meets Olivia and a classic story of poverty to riches is produced, after which Stewie fails and Olivia continues to live without him. One of my favorite scenes from the entire series occurs here when Olivia tells Stewie, “You’re the weakest link,” referencing the short-lived game show from the same era. Stewie responds with a prolonged assault on his intelligence in classic Stewie form.
4. Brian Goes Back to College: Brian loses his new job at the New Yorker for failing to finish his college education. After which he decides to go back to Brown. The Stewie / Brian tag throughout the plot is fully established at this point in the series, so Stewie goes with it. Stewie loves college life while Brian tries to quit, unable to complete his last class. The academic battle, with the Rocky themes, and the classic stereotypes of college cinema make this a great episode.
5. Da Boom – An old but good, who plays on all the Y2K fears of the late 90s. Aired the day after Christmas 1999, the episode follows the destruction of the world’s infrastructure and the post-apocalyptic travels of the Griffin family to find a Twinkie factory they could live off. The mutations of his friends and the reformation of the landscape are reminiscent of the post-nuclear classics of the 50s and 60s, and Stewie finally turns into an octopus. The end of the episode is a throwback to the entire Dallas fiasco when Bobby is in the shower and Pam describes her “dream.” The height of irony and satire of the quasi-mass hysteria that the world almost felt at the end of 1999.
Family Guy is more than five great episodes. Until a small portion of season 4 in 2005, the show was pure genius and each of Seth McFarlane’s vignettes in suburban Rhode Island is a joy to watch over and over again.
