Review: Family Guy “The Elle Word”

Overview

When Quagmire starts dating a mystery woman, Peter, Joe, and Cleveland go on a stakeout and discover her to be The Librarian.

Cutaways

Murder She Wrote, The Mandalorian, Skyrizi, Braveheart, Koala Peter, What A Debacle!

Our Take

For years and years we’ve seen the legendary Quagmire and his sexcapades give us legendary moments that are now embedded in Family Guy lore. Some might say he may be a bit of a masochist, but some girls like that and everybody has their thing.This week we learn that Elle the Librarian has a thing and evidently whatever it is it’s the stuff that books are written about, but here we are talking about *checks notes* Elle the Librarian. Now, it may sound like I’m complaining, but actually I loved the idea of writer Alex Carter using a seldom-used character in the show which seems to be an ongoing theme for the show the last season with other characters like Principal Shepherd also getting more screen time.

This week we also get another Brian & Stewie adventure that’s a bit more by the numbers given that we’ve actually seen Brian’s take on dog leashes in the episode “Road to the Multiverse” so for the climax to the B-plot to go the way it does was kind of expected and I gotta tell ya I’m not a fan of Stewie becoming more and more of a bitch character. This we got to see an episode about the producers of Family Guy more or less reclaiming classic Quagmire and letting us keep him for better or for worse, but to see Stewie just maligned the way he has been the last few seasons as compared to the much more assertive and crazy character we used to have is kind of a bummer. I mean this is the same kid that dragged a bloody garbage bag filled with New Brian to the curb, now he’s on baby leashes?

Fortunately, the cutaway gags were so plentiful and funny this week that it really helped punch up whatever qualms I could have about the episode. This ongoing gag with John Viener just throwing in random interjections about whatever is the type of stuff I live for and is on par with Morgan Freeman Visa commercials in terms of the type of comfort food I enjoy the most out of my voice acting performances. Like if someone wanted to make me a Spotify mix of John Viener one-liners I wouldn’t say no. This week it’s “What A Debacle!” which, coupled with the Skyrizi commercials successfully saw the show deploy TWO multiple-part gags over the course of a 22-minute episode which is really quite impressive. What’s NOT impressive was not getting Bill Burr or John Mayer to voice themselves in their punchlines, especially Bill who I think would’ve gone for it if asked, but if this show is gonna start throwing jabs at my Boston Bruins WE’RE GONNA HAVE PROBLEMS!

This week’s new episode of Family Guy is the last new one until the end of this month and it’s a good one! Nothing mind-blowing this week, but with the cutaways it’s definitely one of the funnier episodes of the season thus far.