Family Guy: The Father, the Son and the Holy Fonz
I was a little worried going into this episode, that they had given the best jokes away in the
commercials: Stewie running into the glass wall over and over again, Brian rolling him down the steps, Brian painting
his ball black. Fortunately, I was very wrong. This was one of the funniest episodes this year, and most of the jokes
didn't even come from what we saw in the previews. I think this was actually the episode that I promised to
"time" the segues, but with all the commotion around here, you guys are just going to have to wait until next
time for that. On with the show!Trouble starts when Peter's religious zealot father, Francis, shows up at the Grffin's front door for his birthday
dinner. Even though she made the dinner, Francis makes Lois sit at the "children's table," since she's a
Protestant. Peter starts giving them grief for not having Stewie baptized yet, much to Brian's protest. The next
morning, Francis takes Stewie and Peter down to the church to have the ceremony performed. The priest warns them that
the holy water was "tainted," but Francis executes the ritual without the clergy. Stewie becomes very sick
and has to be placed in a germ free, isolated container to avoid further infection. Peter realized that his faith has
been guided by his father his entire life, and not by his own true "faith." After trying (and offending) a couple of religions, Peter stumbles across the one man that he has always believed in: Arthur Fonzarelli. He builds an entire church and belief system around the "leather jacketed one" and actually gains a rather large following. Both Brian and Francis see just how wrong what Peter doing is, and decide to set aside their differences to take the new pontiff down. They get Sherman Hemsley, Gavin MacLeod, and Kirk Cameron to come to Peter's church and recruit members for their own religions, each based on their famous TV counterparts. Well, except Cameron, he's recruiting for Christianity. Peter's congregation leaves in droves, until he's finally left with only himself. He talks with Brian and his father and realizes the folleys of his ways. At least he's not as stupid as Madonna.
Man, I was cracking up from begining to end on this one. The bit with the couple outside of the fertility clinic was classic, then the payoff later with Lindsay Lohan was even better. I do think I'm going to have bad dreams about how creepy Brian looked with Stewies face though, eeewwwww. I'm a little disappointed that Henry Winkler didn't actually show up in the show, but I know he's really only parodied the Fonz once, and that was on Arrested Development, so we'll let that slide. Praise be the Fonz. Let me know what you think (when commenting is back, of course.)
Pop Culture References of the Week:
Aquaman abusing his powers. (Aquaman is all over the damn place, recently)
Bill Lumberg from Office Space. (Holy crap)
Stewie asking people to switch over to Desperate Housewives.
Face/Off

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