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Family Guy: Barely Legal
(S05E08) December is a tough month for TV. "Barely Legal" is the only new Family Guy episode for the month, as they are off again next Sunday. But hey, if you are only going to do one episode in a month, might as well make it a good one. And this one was.It seemed like more of a cohesive story than we have seen in a while as the whole family was tied in to the same storyline. Not only that, but it was a Meg story. She's been almost absent from the show so far this season, so it was a nice change of pace to move the focus away from Peter and Stewie.
Meg has always taken a lot of crap. It's just what she does. Not having a date for the dance was nothing new. But Jimmy killing his little brother to avoid having to go with her was a little harsh. And Stewie's line, "Brian, I present to you your polished turd for the evening." was probably the most humiliating thing since Meg's butt was the exit to the portal. No worries though, making fun of Meg is still funny, so more power to them. Brian's refusal to disagree every time Meg mentioned being fat or ugly was pretty good too.
I liked the story of Meg's infatuation with Brian. The origin of it was great, with a drunk Brian defending her to Connie, by explaining what a whore Connie is, followed by the big make out and puke scene. The Richard Marx tune in the background was a nice touch. And that all led to Meg's insane crush. It was a very Quahog Swimfan.
Chris had to take a back seat this week, but his excuse of being buried in paperwork for 72 hours when he didn't mention that Meg had tied Brian up and thrown him in the trunk was funny. Creepy Meg with the hair pie and candlelit dinner was strangely disturbing. The resolution with Quagmire actually imparting good advice was a nice twist.
There could have been more done with the Police Academy part of the story, but with only 22 minutes, something has to go. The Police Academy movies are just perfect for Family Guy parody though, so more would have been fun. What little we did get from it was well done with the highlight being full cavity search training. For those that were wondering, the list of items Peter found in Quagmire's ass included a cell phone, wedge of cheese, doorknob, lollipop, xylophone, and a DVD of Goodburger. It was nice how they tied that all back in with the search for Meg and Brian. How did they not get Steve Gutenberg to do a cameo for this episode though?
The episode didn't have the normal collection of cutaway gags, but that wasn't a bad thing. It can start to feel a little formulaic, so something a little different once in a while is nice. Most of the spots that would normally have gone to those completely unrelated bits were used for the crazier parts of the episode story. Things like Peter coming home with the giraffe he swiped from the zoo, and named Allison Janney. The end of that one, with Cleveland's tub crashing to the ground, was a nice call back to "Hell Comes To Quahog."
The pronunciation joke, with the H sound, was silly, but I thought it played really well. All three times even. As did the other language joke with Jillian and Eastern and Specific time. Probably my favorite of the bunch was Garret Morris as Headmaster of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing. That's reaching all the way back to season one of SNL. The only typical cutaway bit that really stood out to me was Brian and the bubblegum fart. The lowest of the lowbrow, but funny. Maybe it's just my hatred for all things Star Wars, but I didn't think the Emperor dialog joke was funny at all.
Overall, I'd call this one a really good episode. It had a different feel, partly because of the Meg focus, and partly because of the decrease in gags, but it worked.
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