Review: Family Guy “Old World Harm”

Overview

Peter and Lois vacation in Florida, only to discover they’ve rented a condo in a retirement community; Brian helps Stewie take his first shower.

Cutaways

Peter with a jet pack, Brian’s shower, Lois on Airplane Pills, World’s Softest Toilet Seats, Muscle Peter, The Dutch

Our Take

Family Guy returns with a brand-new episode and, for the most part, is a doozy. Family Guy has always had fun at the expense of the elderly, numerous Carter jokes come to mind, but to have Lois and Peter travel to Florida aka the unofficial retirement capital of the United States, and go to town on a bunch of retirement gags was outrageous, and I loved every minute of it. Yeah, one could see some similarities to South Park’s “Hummels & Heroin”, the fact that a retirement home has an underground illegal operation of some sort, but there were still a bunch of jokes that did just enough to give the show enough room to play around in that I really enjoyed everything that was being thrown at me.

Stewie and Brian’s “B”-plot doesn’t have a TON of meat on the bone, but Stewie’s brilliantly animated and choreographed climax featuring him swimming through the tub was fantastic, and really helps implement a well-thought out crescendo to help augment a rather typical premise.

This week’s episode featured almost a half-a-dozen cutaway gags which was surprising given that the episode was able to effectively weigh out two solid plots with THAT number of gags, a really impressive feat. We also got a multitude of guest stars this week with a lot of big names starting to fill up the back-end of this voice roster. Between the likes of Kym Whitley, Henry Winkler (!!!!), Paget Brewster, and a whole host of others, Family Guy was NOT lacking in the notable names department when it came to this week’s episode.