Review: Family Guy “Christmas Crime”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Brian destroys Mayor West’s nativity scene after a drunken night of debauchery and leaves the evidence at a local airport parking lot. Mayor West is personally taking on the investigation of whomever destroyed his hand-crafted creation and soon makes his way over to 31 Spooner Street to enlist Brian’s dog-sniffing skills to help in the search of the culprit. With no suspect in sight, Mayor West announces that Christmas is canceled which enrages Stewie enough to turn his dog in. After spending some time in jail, Mayor West lets Brian out to learn the true meaning of Christmas. Meanwhile, Chinese tech companies learn that getting passwords from Americans isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Cutaway Gags

Happy Asking Panda, Spirit Airlines, McGruff, M&M Advent Calendar

Our Take

Family Guy finishes off 2021 with a by-the-numbers Christmas special that features all of the typical tropes that How The Grinch Stole Christmas largely mastered before, but the result is a mostly satisfying effort. By far and away the better story would’ve been having more fun with that “Happy Asking Panda” bit which may or may not have encouraged Disney to make sure this episode doesn’t make it to the company’s Chinese homeland, but then again, that would be too South Park for this franchise to take on. In any event, the cutaway gags did a great job of punching in jokes into a premise that probably would’ve been too easy on the typical Family Guy viewers’ eyes had they not been there, and the gags were great. Spirit Airlines takes another one on the chin and people are already talking about the McGruff cameo. All in all, Family Guy finishes the year strong.