Review: Family Guy “Crimes and Meg’s Demeanor”

They say you can’t go home again.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Meg spends another night on the couch indulging in gross habits when Peter walks in and encourages her to crash a party to help her live it up in her senior year, though really he and Lois just want to watch TV. Meg decides to go, but starts guzzling booze to get attention, leading her to slowly become an alcoholic to boost her confidence. Surprisingly, this becomes a problem, with her acting out at school and staying out late. Peter, feeling responsible, tries to snap her out of it, but ends up getting caught in a night-long binge across the globe which ends with them waking up on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Meg’s first hangover kicks in, but Peter’s experience with them helps her to overcome it, as well as convincing her to never drink again. Some mocking of alleged actor Chris O’Donnell gets him to come rescue them just to mess with them on the ride back. Also, Chris looks through a telescope, I guess?

Meanwhile, back at Brian’s totally permanent current place of residence, Brian is still injured from being pushed down the stairs the last episode, and so uses this time to spy on his neighbors in the nearby building in an homage to the 1954 Hitchcock classic, “Rear Window”. Seeing Principal Shepard in a heated argument with his wife (something that has apparently been building in the background for the past couple seasons) followed by him carrying a dripping trashbag leads Brian to believe Shepard killed his wife. Brian calls Stewie in to help get into Shepard’s house to investigate, but that only leads him back to Brian’s apartment where he confronts him. Joe and the police intervene, revealing that Shepard’s wife is not actually dead and Shepard has been stealing food from the school. While not the same as outing a murder, this does end up being enough to redeem Brian and get him to come home.

OUR TAKE

Oh my god, did anyone see THAT ending coming? Wow, I was THIS close to creating a Lou the Landlord subreddit since he’d become such an instant fan favorite character. Boy, they got me good.

Yeah, but seriously, was anyone convinced they were going through with this? And it’s not like this has any meta-commentary implications like Brian’s three-episode death did. We already had a major status quo shake-up for rating buzz that was almost instantly undone to mock shows that do that sort of thing. But what was THIS meant to be about? Brian does something stupid to get sent away an does something completely unrelated to get himself back, barely giving lip service to the thing he did that started this mess. At least the episode that brought him back was ABOUT Stewie missing him enough to do it, AND gave the replacement character a good send off. This…what WAS this? Why was this done? Who was this for? This show already has seemingly meaningful consequences undone by the end of the episode on a near weekly basis, so why draw this out at all, let alone for three weeks?

Beyond that, certainly some chuckle-worthy gags here and there, including one regarding Kevin Spacey that I am honestly not sure was written before or after these recent revelations, another jab at multi-level marketing, and of course you usually can’t go wrong with a Hitchcock parody, but it’s not quite enough to justify this kind of the waste of time and writing potential. I’ve seen way better Peter-Meg episodes, so that doesn’t even come close to balancing things out.

Next week’s the last episode before the Christmas break, with a fitting Christmas Carol parody. I imagine that’ll be a better way to go out for the show this year, but we’ll have to wait and see.