Review: Family Guy “The Chicken or the Meg”

The chicken episodes for Family Guy might be my favorite mythos of the show’s 23 season run so I could be a BIT biased for this review, but as a longtime fan of the show I have to say “The Chicken or the Meg” might be the best episode of the show in ages. Like early Seth MacFarlane-era good.  Emily Towers has brought forth an episode that absolutely should be in consideration for the Emmy and I don’t even know when the last time I’ve said that for a Family Guy episode.

For starters, no B-plots here fellas, and that’s the way I like my Family Guy. The show works best when the cast has to deal with a common conflict and this is one of those instances. In this case, it’s Meg hooking up with a chicken she meets on a reality show which, by the way, gets all of the punch downs that the reality TV industry deserves at the moment (and yes, the QR code works, but not the website) and the ongoing beats that the show gives are hilarious.

Then the gags start rolling in, and not just the cutaways which are each hysterical in their own right, but the non sequitur/story within a story aspects of the show that just delivered over and over again. From Meg’s fart to the illusionist to Peacock getting crushed and Airbnb, Family Guy was just torturing my belly with laughs on laughs.

Less we forget the plot itself which is fantastic and may or may not put future giant chicken episodes in question judging by the ending which had me on cloud nine. EVERYTHING worked tonight, every bit, every joke, and definitely a good episode to replay on marathons especially if FXX ever does chicken fight marathons (do they?). Family Guy gets its flowers tonight for the first time in a while. If you need to watch just ONE episode of Family Guy this season, it’s this one and that’s with a season that’s already seen a “9” episode and a couple of “8.5’s”. Even compared to those, this feels like the Emmy-winner.