Review: Family Guy “Get Stewie”

Overview

Stewie and Brian head to a concert and literally right in the middle of the show Stewie is accused of offending the singer and the duo have to leave early but that doesn’t fix anything on the social webs where Stewie is now subjected to cancel culture. Worst yet, shit escalates quickly when Stewie’s a social pariah at pre-school and then someone blows up his big wheel and kills Rupert in the process.

Brian comes upon a possible plot by Stewie to get even against the baby’s one time crush. Turns out, Stewie ends up making a speech and Brian gets his pal a new Rupert.

Meanwhile, Lois wants Peter to lose weight so Pete opts for a lap-band. The problem is Peter is just a blog covered in skin bags and it’s becoming a bigger issue. At Chris’ science fair, Peter shows up as a hero to bail his kid out of getting another failing grade. Peter gets shocked back to his original weight and Chris wins the science fair.

Cutaways

FaceChair, Coat Check, Moderately Priced Kitchens, Cocky Jogger, Boston Dynamics Dad

Our Take

Point of interest, this episode isn’t the 400th episode aired of Family Guy, it’s the 400th produced, but not aired. FOX just opted for some of that Black Friday ad cash and decided to move up the premiere of this episode a few weeks ago and there it is. The red carpet event, all of the advertising, really most of it moot. Not that it really matters because FOX does this with all of the milestone episodes, but just putting it out there. I look forward to Family Guy’s 500th episode being celebrated over the course of the next six weeks.

In any event, this week’s episode kind of rehashed a few ideas that were well explored in the past, just with a twist here-or-there. Peter losing weight has happened a couple of times in the past, most recently in “Family Guy Lite”, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of the ‘flappy skin’ jokes because I don’t think that gets enough attention when people get major weight loss surgery. Worse yet, the number of people who spend the money on the surgery only to turn around and just eat through the results is another growing problem, as such, I actually think the “B”plot could have been an “A” with a few more pokes at all of the holes of the aforementioned “medical breakthroughs”. That said, Peter flying through the air provided for some giggles as did his chauvinistic attitude towards his flappy skin, add in the funny cutaways and a solid premise, not a bad showing.

The “A” plot with Stewie and Brian I felt had also been explored a bunch before. Social media premises have been done a bunch on the show with Brian also getting an episode having to do with social media outrage that actually turned into a multiple-episode arc which I think had more meat on it’s bones than this week’s effort.

I’m not quite sure what the big hoopla around this episode was other than the milestone. I know Seth MacFarlane sort of pitched this idea to the writer’s room and Artie Johann took it from there, but really, the premises are largely recycled almost as a reminder that for this show to survive another “400” episodes, I think we need some new talent in the writer’s room much the same way The Simpsons is doing it for the last few seasons.