Summary (spoilers after):
Attending a baseball game allows Peter and Chris to spend some time together. Following that, one of the spectators thinks Chris’ baseball is a home run ball and purchases it from him. As a result, Peter and Chris launched their service selling false artifacts. When they sold Quagmire a captain’s hat that he believed belonged to Sully Sullenberger, they eventually came to regret that choice. When told that he doesn’t look like an infant, Stewie uses a face-lift to make himself appear younger. He went too far with the plan, so he had to fix it before the school photo day.
Our Opinion
Fox is now up to date with Family Guy’s weekly schedule after the last program was delayed due to the NASCAR incident two weeks ago. Hopefully, the network won’t make the same error again. At first, it seemed strange for Chris to ask Lois if she was a scientist to open the episode. I didn’t anticipate Chris’s query to be a sexual joke, but the program subsequently made it clear.
One of the gags in the show, this one was a slight step up from the humor in the previous one. Some of the humor, like Chris’s inquiry about scientists and Cleveland mistaking Sully Sullenberger for Sullivan from Monsters Inc., worked well in its favor. However, there were a few visual jokes that were as revolting-looking as a block of moldy cheese. I’ll address that shortly. When Peter made a reference to the Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show and the episode paused to show the complete title sequence, the joke left me on the fence. One the one hand, I learned that the show did in fact exist. However, it was something that appeared superfluous. This joke wasn’t one of the show’s visual jokes, which are frequently succinct and to the point. This joke should have been either deleted or condensed to avoid offending anyone. This problem was succinctly encapsulated in the scene with Quagmire and Peter playing elderly people that followed the title sequence. It seemed to go on forever because it is so lengthy.
The stories themselves did have a few amusing moments throughout the episode, but they had a hard time being very compelling. Except for Meg’s role in the episode’s climax. Stewie’s face-lift scenario was the only one that troubled me. He did actually appear slightly younger and cuter when he used it once. But after using it once more, he turned out to be creepier than cute. Oh no, things get worse. Stewie’s face-lift needed to be fixed, but it appeared like everything was under control after that. But as soon as they snapped the photo, Stewie’s scalp’s skin simply peeled off. Yikes. One of the plots that intended to be both offensive and humorous but ultimately succeeded only in being offensive.
The fake collectibles and face-lift episode from this week was a little funnier than the one from last week. But in order to get some chuckles, Stewie’s story did stoop to some grotesqueness, which made me feel more uneasy than amused. I don’t like the Hudson Brothers joke, but I’ll take that any day over a photo of Stewie’s peeled-off face. This will definitely serve as a reminder to me to never get a facelift to seem younger.