Review: Family Guy “Family Guy Lite”

Is there too much water?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Peter begins to suspect that he’s a little on the hefty side when he tries to take the stairs to his desk instead of the elevator. Of all people, Joe has to go save him. The rest of Peter’s pals convince the hefty hunk to lose some weight for the sake of his health. Everything has to change, Peter’s diet, exercising more, the whole bit is on the table to make sure the patriarch of the Griffin household leads a healthy life. None of that works, so Quagmire throws Peter down a hole inside of his house in an attempt to starve the pounds off the hard way. The problem is when Peter loses all the weight he still keeps the saggy skin that goes along with the weight loss.

The wives of Spooner Street decide to start a writers’ workshop, and Lois is taking it seriously. When Brian and Stewie discover it, Brian looks at this as the opportunity to try and sway Lois, but soon theorizes that Lois is having an affair. Turns out, Lois was just spending time with someone who is mentally handicapped.

Cutaway Gags

Surfing Lessons, Slinky in the Stinky, Window Fog, Divorced Man with No Kids, Chris’ monologue

Our Take

This isn’t the first time that a recent episode of Family Guy went back to a trope from the show’s early days. Every now and again the producers will kick off a bit where Stewie tries to kill Lois again or, in this case, Brian wanting to sleep with Lois. The other? The idea that not everyone can understand Stewie, of which, I thought was left behind a while ago as well. Peter losing weight, that’s a rather cliched trope that we’ve seen countless times before. Fortunately, we had quite a few funny gags that somewhat keep this week’s episode from swirling into a crazy disaster.

That said, I can’t help but look at this episode that shepherd’s age-old Family Guy and then marvel at the untapped potential this franchise has to really expand. For starters, I think Bert & Sheila have been heavily underutilized in their first season, as have Cleveland and Donna since they’ve been back from The Cleveland Show (which ironically got a shout out this evening in one of Peter’s quips). Maybe instead of trying to dig up the bodies of gags from Family Guy yesteryear, we can maybe get more attention to some of the newer ancillary characters to spice things up. This season of The Simpsons has been reaping the rewards of episodes that have guest-starred the likes of Moe, Krusty, and Comic Book Guy to rave fan-fare, it’s hard to imagine that Family Guy doesn’t want to do the same.