Review: Family Guy “One Foot in Front of the Mother”

Overview

Due to a police complaint about his excessive barking, Brian has to wear a shock collar; looking to join an after-school team, Chris discovers a talent for speed walking .

Cutaways

Basketball, Hell Froze Over

Our Take

Anytime we get a Brian and Quagmire battle I’m game and I’m even more game whenever Seth MacFarlane has to lean more into Brian’s dog qualities rather than his much safer human ones. To hear Seth MacFarlane, a guy who has a Googled net-worth of $300 million go to town on a bunch of barking records always brings a wide-smile to my face. Moreover, Brian and Quags’ rivalry is one of the more underrated ones in the show and has brought with it some of the show’s best episodes.

Chris and Lois’ bit was probably a bit more plain Jane, but I still had fun with it. The show utilized fewer cutaway gags in the episode and instead relied more on non sequiturs to help drive home jokes which is always a nice refresh from time-to-time and with that came some solid work from seldom used characters like Donna and Junior Brown, Herbert, and Principal Shepherd. The result meant less screentime for standard Family Guy characters like Meg, Stewie, and even Peter which shows that the show still has plenty of comedic heft even without the main characters.

Overall, this week’s Matt McElaney-written episode was a solid entry in the show and as we look into the show’s summer run I’m looking forward to seeing more from Matt in the future. Moreover, I wanted to make sure I got some flowers in for director Greg Colton who did a marvelous job especially in the dog fight scene and even during the “Hell Froze Over” cutaway, neither of which looked easy to pull off but Greg really did a great job here.