Family Guy: Road To Germany
By fred | October 20, 2008
(S07E03) Last week’s episode was absolutely hilarious, and a much needed great episode after a season premiere which turned out to be quite disappointing and, quite honestly, not very funny. It was a real pain, because if there are characters on this show that usually always are the funniest and make for the best moments, it’s without a doubt the couple of Stewie and Brian.
The season premiere was focusing on them, and yet the laughs were missing. It wasn’t pleasant to be let down by those two, but that’s probably why we now got this episode, one episode that - once again - put the focus on the baby and the dog of the Griffin family, and this time it worked. It really worked, the episode was not only great but also the best one of this new season so far. (Okay, sure, we’re only 3 episodes in, but still…)
After a quick scene with the entire family, even Meg who hasn’t been seen much so far (though I don’t doubt Quagmire kept an eye on her), we had to deal with no other than something very popular these days : time travel. Looking for a bathroom and mistaking Stewie’s time machine for one, Mort Goldman was sent back in time. When they realized what happened, Brian and Stewie decided to go look for him, heading back to Europe in 1939 as well.
And then began the latest Road To adventure of our two heroes, an action-packed episode filled with a few musical moments, but not too much (and none from them), lots of action sequences, and many laughs of course. Just because they were in 1939 doesn’t mean they couldn’t relate to current events, and on that regard I absolutely loved the references to the Presidential election, coming up, first the allusion that the U.S. didn’t invade Germany back then, as they were (for real) making weapons of mass destruction, because they didn’t had any oil (unlike Iraq), and of course Stewie borrowing a surprisingly perfectly fitting uniform to a Nazi soldier, only to find right there a “McCain/Palin” sticker.
I loved how they used the gag about animal’s sound later on to place that they were in Europe, and I also loved when Stewie got mad about Brian’s remark that his time machine didn’t had any display to tell the year Mort was sent to — “Oh I’m sorry Brian, is my time machine not as good as you’re time machine? Oh, yeah, you probably got a way better time machine… Stupid dog!”
As with any time-traveling story we had some duche time-traveler remarks (asking when, and more importantly when the were), and of course lots of references. There were many of them and I won’t list them of all, if only because I’m sure I missed a few, but I especially loved the two more obvious ones, very well done and complete with the proper use of accompanying music.
As with any time travel, we had the obligatory reference to Back To The Future, although I’m not sure this one is the one we usually get, as it didn’t had anything to do with time travel. But it was pretty perfect, Stewie getting his own skateboard just as Marty did in the past as well, and eventually driving the limo of the bad guy into a truck, getting him flooded by manure. Just perfect. (Also, the need for Uranium was another reference to the cult trilogy, obviously.)
If a couple of weeks ago South Park showed how pissed they were at Lucas & Spielberg about the latest Indy movie, which really wasn’t an Indy movie, this week on Family Guy we had a nice reminder of one of the original movies, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom. It was also a must, with Nazis as bad guys and our heroes in a plane going down, and once again with the use of the classic theme song this worked perfectly. Those were all scenes not necessarily hilarious, but they were great nevertheless.
Another one that also was pretty funny, was of course during the U-Boat chase, after Stewie’s long-shot idea of sending the following U-Boat a newspaper to block their view actually worked and got it to crash, we had a pile of police cars crashing up in similar manner as seen on The Blues Brothers.
Adding a few jokes about Jews in there (”..and so we had him crucified, but that doesn’t leave this room.“), a little Stewie vs Hitler gag, a musical cut short (thank God), and this was a really awesome episode. Pretty great, and yet, as often when time travel is involved, it wasn’t immune to paradoxes.
Specifically, in the end they get back to the present a few seconds before Mort shows up in Stewie’s room, killing the rescued Mort and destroying the time machine, thus preventing the while time-travel to take place in the first time. Problem is, we’ve got another Stewie & Brian downstairs watching TV… Aw, the delight of time travel!
Did you have as much fun as I did with this episode ? Was Peter’s product-placement for Ensure a bit too obvious ? Which references did you love most ? U-571 ? Top Gun ? Star Wars ? What was your favorite line/moment of the episode ?
Posted in Reviews
Shows: Family Guy
While I was watching, I was thinking, “This is really good animation.” I didn’t think it was very funny. There seemed to be a lot of dry stretches between the jokes.