Review: Family Guy “The Fat Lotus”

Overview

In this Griffin-family twist on the popular HBO series, Peter suspects Lois of betraying his trust with Quagmire at a swanky vacation resort.

Our Take

This is at least the third animated rendition of The White Lotus I’ve had to cover just this year alone and I still haven’t seen the show. Between The Simpsons doing “The Yellow Lotus”, American Dad doing “Brown Lotus”, and now Family Guy, all we need now is for South Park’s cover song of the hit HBO series to complete the sombrero.

As for Family Guy, this week’s episode somewhat straddles the line between how this show normally does a parody, not unlike the anthology episodes, and really just the Griffins going on a trip and putting The White Lotus pastiche all over it. I wouldn’t be able to tell what the specific instances of parody are because, again, I know nothing about The White Lotus, but really the crux over what Peter suspects Lois of betraying him over is a slice of cheesecake. Moreover, we get a B-plot with Meg and Chris trying to steal from the gift shops and a C-plot where Stewie meets some gay friends and go off for some sort of a jaunt, I don’t even know to be honest because I was bored out of my mind.

Typically I like Steve Callaghan-written episodes, but this episode’s premise really does feel like his character in the movie Ted 2 where this is the unfunny and unoriginal idea that someone came up with instead of potentially going with another more original idea that maybe would’ve been more funny than this. We didn’t even get any cutaway gags and with what little hope that I thought the show would’ve had maybe more fun at the expense of costly trips quickly vanishes in a dull script with too-safe dialogue but we DID get a Consuela cameo so maybe there’s some hope Mike Henry has gotten over himself a bit and can return to continue to do the funny characters that helped put him on the map. Other than that, this week’s episode should be sent back out to sea.