Review: Family Guy “Baby It’s Cold Inside”

Overview

Peter is emasculated when, on their anniversary, he abandons Lois amidst a shark attack; Stewie finds a mini fridge and lives the dorm lifestyle.

Cutaways

MAD Magazine, Danny DeVito and the Magic Mosquito,Michael Douglas, Safe word, SNL Opening Credits, Coins, Chris Daughtry Cameo

Our Take

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Danny Smith-written episode of Family Guy and while the premises were just fine, I think it’s the cutaways that make this one worth watching, almost more of an old-school effort. If you recall the glory days of Family Guy, even the episodes that had somewhat cliched premises could survive on the strength of cutaways and dialogue alone and that’s what this week’s episode reminded me of.

We’ve seen a number of TV shows do “husband forgets a special day for the wife and he spends the episode making it up to her” a number of times, but Family Guy gets a bit edgier with jokes featuring sex dolls, Joe’s stupid popcorn, and some of the cutaways that were featured in the A-plot, most notably the cutaways featuring SNL, Cameo, and Coins.

Likewise, we’ve seen a number of premises where Stewie tries to look cool in front of Brian but it backfires, and really this one felt like a Roger bit from American Dad, however the Danny DeVito shiner had me howling.

With all of that said, the cutaways really were the winner this evening. Coins, fucking Chris Daughtry in a real Cameo might be the biggest cutaway of all-time, and really all of the others helped me add a few new holes to the wall in how hard I was laughing. The TikTok kids are going to be all over this one, sooner rather than later.