Review: Family Guy “Lifeguard Meg”
Overview
Stewie and Brian become overwhelmed after winning a coffee shop. Peter and his friends annoy Meg at her new lifeguard job when they don’t follow the pool rules.
Cutaways
Dollywood, Meg’s Fairy Tale, Cake Chris
Our Take
THIS is more like it. We’ve seen a number of episodes featuring Brian and Stewie launching some sort of business and we’ve seen a number of instances where Meg gets a job and Peter tries to screw it up, but this week’s episode entitled “Lifeguard Meg” written by Patrick Meighan because of the gag-filled landmine that was the dialogue of the episode.
Where do I even begin? I was a bit worried with the missed Dollywood cutaway, but other cutaways like Meg’s Fairy Tale and Cake Chris were fantastic and more than made up for it. Then the show proceeded to just beat the living hell out of me with excellent punchlines having to do with any business that’s under “New Management”, Lois’ past trysts with the band Hoobastank, the Woody Allen hit just before the commercial. The show has done several Spelling Bee bits as well, but this week’s episode has certainly one of the better ones.
The plot for “Lifeguard Meg” was strong as well. Even with Brian and Stewie’s familiar premise, the fact that the show seems to be emboldening its stance on cancel culture and then delivering jokes on topics that matter more than pop culture like Chase Bank and mothers who breastfeed in public(for the record, I’m totally fine with) is the type of recipes we need for more quality Family Guy episodes.
Family Guy takes a week off before we return for the final two episodes of the season, let’s hope we can see this series finish the season strong.
Short of getting Roiland back, which I'm sure isn't going to happen, I don't even think they could get much better than the new voices from the previous season. And the ratings for season 7 weren't much lower on average than for season 6; it was pretty much just a normal season-to-season drop that most likely would have happened regardless.
I mean, look at the actual averages:
Season 1 - 1.57 million viewers Season 2 - 1.97 million viewers Season 3 - 2.33 million viewers Season 4 - 1.52 million viewers Season 5 - 0.96 million viewers Season 6 - 0.56 million viewers Season 7 - 0.42 million viewers
Ever since season 3, it had been having steep drops even with Roiland still involved; the season 6 to 7 drop is actually the smallest-percentage drop it's had since it started dropping, and if anything it's possible that changing the voice actors actually *boosted* interest a bit and prevented it from dropping even more.