Review: Family Guy “Unzipped Code”

Overview

The boys wanna raise money to help with Jerome’s recovery from a recent injury, so they opt to create a calendar and they all become the pinups. The amount of money raised allows for Jerome to make a full recovery and then some, but we learn that Cleveland’s picture features a loose testicle drooping down his short shorts and available for anyone to see.

Cleveland’s boss at the Post Office finds out and fires Cleveland who ends up getting a new job at Peter’s brewery managing the shipping & logistics and not long after getting a promotion. Eventually, Cleveland decides to leave and get his job back at the Post Office and offers up Peter to be his replacement.

Cutaways

Handicap Bathroom, Youtube Videos of Les Dawson, Cleveland Saying Goodbye, Bird Youtube, Peter’s Instagram, Turn Out The Lights

Our Take

There were a lot of things to like about this week’s episode of Family Guy. For starters, it was the first long episode of Family Guy that kind of focused on one plot in quite a while. Second, I can’t recall when we had a Cleveland-focused episode last, and even if, this is definitely the first one since Arif Zahir took over the role from Mike Henry. Because of all of these attributes, “Unzipped Code” feels fresh, funny, and original.

It’s not that we haven’t seen other people come in and show Peter a thing or two at the brewery before, we’ve seen that, but making it Peter’s good buddy that got a four season spin-off makes the premise hurt that much more. We got a number of cutaways that were great and helped bookend a number of jokes, and really the entire episode had excellent flow.

With this being a Cleveland-focused episode, I would’ve liked to have seen a tad more of Cleveland’s family, perhaps reacting to the fact that Cleveland lost his job and whether or not this would have caused any sort of a conflict, and maybe that is the B plot, Junior or Rallo trying to get a job or something, but with Cleveland’s fast rise I could see why the producers didn’t go that route.

This is really just a small gripe in what was an otherwise really great episode of Family Guy. There’s only one more before a couple of weeks off in November, but Family Guy has had some good episodes with the season still young, hopefully the show can build on this in the months to come that will include a 400th episode. No Weird Al bits this week, but if you need more Weird Al jokes, try that Harry Potter-starring film.