Family Guy: Play It Again, Brian
By fred | March 3, 2008
(S06E10) It’s been a while since we saw a new Family Guy, and I was sure happy to get to see one ! This show, like so many others, has been away for our screens for a little while now, and I’ve missed it and the many laughs it usually generates.
For this little comeback, the show offered us a somewhat “special” episode. It wasn’t anything really new or that we hadn’t seen before, but this episode once again featured only a selection of characters, leaving others (almost) unseen, and also had one main story to make the entire episode. In the past, this is something that resulted in pretty awful results, and disappointing episodes. Thankfully, this time was different.
This time it was no disappointment, this was a good episode and it was majorly funny. But it wasn’t a great episode, nor was it really hilarious. As I said, in the past when this show went with one single story to conduct the entire episode, the results weren’t always good. And as I said then, I really don’t think they should focus on such a thing, we don’t care whether there’s one single story or just a bunch of unrelated jokes and events that don’t really seem to make sense, not here, not as long as it makes us laugh.
This time Peter, Lois and Brian were the center of attention, and for the most part it was good. Maybe not all jokes were funny, but most of the time it worked nicely. That said, I found that while funny, it wasn’t really hilarious. Not to say I didn’t laugh throughout the episode, but there were times I was waiting for the next laughs only to witness one joke after the other not managing to really create the laughs.
It wasn’t horrible, no, but it just wasn’t funny enough to make one laugh all the time. And if the story focused on those three, we had a little of other characters, as Herbert had been assigned to watch over the kids. You’d think this could have been funny, but apart from a few jokes bashing Meg, which were all - including Brian’s one at the beginning of the episode - pretty funny, this whole situation turned out to be not as great as one could have hoped.
And we barely saw any of it anyway. For some time all we had of Stewie was his voice as he was calling Brian. This was not good. Not funny, and I wished we’d get more of the little guy because he’s a funny baby. And it’s no surprise that when the phone call lasted a little more, we entered what I think was the funniest moment of the episode, a really hilarious one and the one I laughed the most at, when Stewie described Lois’ vagina and how destroyed it was, so much that he left graffiti here before just walking out…
After this little chat I was left wishing we had more of Stewie, because maybe we would have had more moments like this. You know, when you find yourself not just nodding in agreement, “yeah it’s funny”, but actually laughing out loud, even if you’re alone in front of the TV.
But at least we had another thing to make up for things : when Peter found out that Brian tried to make on move on Lois - another pretty funny moment indeed I have to say, but I always loved it when they have Brian back to his roots, following his animal’s instinct and acting like who he really is, though we may forget from time to time (ask Lois) : a dog ! (Yeah, Lois dreams of doing it with her dog…!)
Anyways, when Peter found out about it, his reaction was hilarious. In initial reaction of course, “was he bigger than me?“, as well as what followed a little after wards : the fight.
We all know that cartoon violence is a great thing, a very entertaining and even a funny thing. Yes, it’s a beautiful thing and we all loved it when Peter and the Chicken are fighting. Sure, maybe this time there was no chicken, but a dog, and the destruction that ensued was in a more restricted place, still it was bloody great stuff!
One last thing : so Brian finally wrote something, all the way till the end, and even got a prize for it. But then, as he admitted himself to Lois, the piece he wrote was in fact mostly plagiarized. This didn’t bother Lois, “well it was still nice“, and I just wondered if this was maybe addressed to all the people out there who keep attacking the show because they only reuse jokes from other sources, or do what The Simpsons did before them (because no matter what, as they say in South Park, The Simpsons did it!)…
Anyways, all in all and while not completely hilarious or as great as this show can be, it was still a pretty good episode, with really funny bits (”Damn, Nature, you’re scary!“), and I enjoyed it. Glad to see the show back, for sure!
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Family Guy
