Review: Family Guy “Baking Bad”

Posted on October 20, 2014August 27, 2019 by Tommy North

Spoilers Below

Hello, awesome readers! Another week, another new Family Guy. If you know me well, and you probably don’t, you know one of my favorite TV shows of all time is the ever popular Breaking Bad. It recently cleaned up at the Emmys, and has made itself one of the best shows to ever air. Naturally, we can expect to see parodies pop up here and there, and last night, Family Guy took a stab at it. Unfortunately, I think they missed the mark on this one. Prior to the episode airing, it seemed the general direction of the episode would be a full blown Breaking Bad parody with a Family Guy twist, but what we ended up with was something that didn’t even really resemble breaking bad. I’m getting ahead of myself though, allow me to give you a synopsis and then I’ll give you my opinion on the episode.

In “Baking Bad” a tragic earthquake hits Haiti and motivates Lois to start a blood drive. To award donors, Lois serves her homemade cookies. They prove to be a hit, and after Peter gets a taste, he talks Lois into opening a cookie store. Meanwhile, Stewie has trouble and Brian gives him a bit of cough syrup to relax him. Stewie becomes obsessed with the sensation and develops an addiction.

If you had seen this episode without knowing its title, you probably would have missed the similarities to Breaking Bad. Perhaps the intention wasn’t a straight up parody, but even then the episode wasn’t that strong. The humor wasn’t connecting well with me this week, and the subplots felt painfully generic. Lois and Peter’s half of the episode felt unfocused, it spent a ton of time on the blood drive, but it was only to set up a reason for why they open the cookie store. I think they could have set up the cookie store in a more interesting way, honestly. Stewie’s addiction to cough syrup was essentially just him saying and doing random drunken things. It’s pretty funny for a scene, but to dedicate an entire half of the episode to just that, it got boring pretty quickly.

As I mentioned above, the humor didn’t hit me the right way this week. I can usually look past a bland story if the episode makes me laugh enough. I watch the show to laugh, that’s the purpose of the show. If it isn’t making me laugh, suddenly everything else becomes irritating. Perhaps it made you guys laugh, and if it did, I’m glad. Personally it just wasn’t where I wanted it.

I don’t have too many positive things to say about this episode, but there were two jokes that made me laugh: one with an annoying customer, and another with a hotel TV show. These may literally be the only two jokes that made me laugh the entire episode, but I found them to be so relatable that I just had to mention them. Beyond that I think I was pretty disappointed with “Baking Bad”. This is less of a criticism and more of a comment, but what Peter does to the cookie store seems like an excellent idea though! Cookies are certainly something that would make an excellent edition to my trips to Montreal.

Overall, I’m disappointed with this one. This season hasn’t impressed me very much so far. This may be the worst one yet, but I still hold on to a sliver of hope that things will be turned around. The stories weren’t interesting, the jokes were blah, and the only real parody of Breaking Bad here is the episode title. Maybe I just had a bad day and didn’t react to the jokes the way I normally would. But there is a ton of room for improvement here. The fatigue I have with Family Guy is disheartening to say the least. I think when Seth and the writers really turn it on, they can give us a really entertaining twenty-two minutes, but there seems to be something missing from the show these days. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the season goes. Much like The Simpsons, Family Guy has maintained enough of a loyal audience to satisfy Fox, but it seems Seth wants to pursue other projects. That’s a discussion for another day though.