Review: Family Guy “Foxx in the Men House”

Is Stryker my bad dream? Or am I Stryker’s?

Overview (Spoilers)

The Griffins eat out at Nikada’s Hibachi Restaurant, most of them enjoying it. Peter, meanwhile, has difficulty knowing which of the theme named restrooms he should enter, and ends up in the women’s, finding out that it’s far cleaner and peaceful than the men’s. He then embarks on a quest to trick storeowners and hotels in order to use their women’s restroom. After an Oscar Winning beat down by Meryl Streep, he soon ends up in a department store’s bathroom and watches the entire first season of House of Card only to find his legs are asleep. This leads to him stumbling and slamming the back of his head into the edge of the sink and waking up to find paramedic Stryker Foxx taking care of him, as well as connecting to him on basically every interest imaginable, even having the other half of his Best Friend necklace.

So, we all know where this is going, right? He hits his head and meets basically his bro-soulmate? It seems pretty clear to me. No? Okay, we’ll keep going.

Stryker starts inviting Peter out to parties and introduces him to interesting people like 1997 George Clooney, but this begins to distance Peter from his other friends. Eventually, they find Peter with Stryker after lying to them about other plans. Turns out Peter didn’t want his bar buddies embarrassing him in front of someone he finds actually cool and cuts ties with them then and there. He then goes on a wingsuiting trip with Stryker, which starts out fun but ends in disaster as Stryker ends up a bloody stain on the side of the mountain. Peter tries to reconcile with his friends but is turned away, so he decides to do the wingsuiting stunt to prove his friendship and gets knocked out. After waking up, it becomes clear that (GASP) nothing with Stryker was real and he’s been in a coma since he hit his head.

Our Take

Well, this was certainly more of a standard Family Guy episode than last week. I’m more used to being just a viewer with my brain turned off, but I have a feeling it isn’t fair to my writing or your reading if I just have a bad attitude about how little there is to these stories. So besides now being very aware of how much this show pads out each episode with cutaway jokes, the main thing to talk about here is how little there was to this episode!

For one, meeting an imaginary friend after a head injury or mental issue is typically used as a way for a character to confront some inner conflict they have (even if it’s just for that episode). And it’s not like a Seth MacFarlane show hasn’t had this type of plot before and done something with it. Early Season 3 American Dad had an episode like this, not so subtly called “The American Dad After School Special”, in which Steve’s new obese but thoughtful girlfriend triggers an emotional crisis and eating disorder in the appearance-obsessed Stan, leading him to conjure up a personal trainer named Zack who drives him to exercise and avoid eating. It’s only after seeing Steve’s love for Debbie despite her physical appearance that he is able to overcome this crisis and get rid of Zack.

In contrast, Peter’s reasons for coming up with Stryker are vague at best. It could be inferred that his exposure to higher quality restrooms gave him higher aspirations in a better social circle beyond Cleveland, Quagmire, and Joe, and so he thought of the coolest person he could possibly imagine. But he was also aware of how “uncool” he and his life were, and so a relationship with a cool person couldn’t last, thus Stryker had to die. So Peter would eventually make his way back to his regular friends through a huge gesture as always, even if he might end up dead.

Or at least, that’s what meaning I stretch to make this episode work. I know some might say that it’s a Family Guy episode and that I shouldn’t expect there to be an actual point to these things. But I can point to several examples, including the American Dad episode I previously mentioned, that show these creators can do a lot better. Maybe they forgot that along the way.