Review: Family Guy “Martian Meg”

Overview

Fed up with not feeling like she belongs, Meg enlists in a training program for a mission to Mars.

Cutaways

Santa

Our Take

For anybody hoping for a truly Family Guy take on The Martian where we get an entire episode of Meg trying to survive the horrors of Mars, let me save you a lot of trouble, none of that happens. Yes, we get a David Bowie song (more on this in a bit), but really, no trip to Mars.

Fortunately, that doesn’t mean we get a bad episode of Family Guy which is good because this is the lost original episode we get until just before the July 4th holiday and I wouldn’t want a bad taste in my mouth for the next month. This week’s episode comes from Matt Porter and our old pal Charlie Hankin in what is one of the few instances where we really don’t get ANY cutaways gags save for a “blink and you’ll miss it” to when Meg was a baby.

As we’ve seen for years Meg has always been on the short-end of the stick with the rest of her family and we’ve seen a lot of that before and I’m not sure this week brings anything drastically different in that regard, BUT we HAVE to shout out Joseph Lee who does some of his best work in this episode, more specifically during the aforementioned music sequence with Meg that I wish would’ve gone just a tad longer but the way it ends is classic Family Guy and overall I enjoyed the bit.

Speaking of classic Family Guy, fans of an old-school Stewie that’s a bit more bloodthirsty will really enjoy the B-plot this week. I won’t give much away but it kicks off with Stewie taking part in a throuple with Rupert and a new plush named “Madein” and let’s just say the climax is “New Brian” level of savagery that we haven’t seen for a while from the little guy.

Speaking of not seen in a while, how about Johnny Brennan back as “Mort” who I can’t even remember the last time we saw and the increasing return of Mike Henry’s “Consuela” who seems to be rearing her beautiful head increasingly more as cancel culture slowly starts to drip away from this franchise. Both are welcome re-additions to the show and joining with them are the always dependable Keith David and Matt Friend, the latter of whom finally brings his “best in show” Howard Stern impersonation to the longtime running animated sitcom.

Overall, a more-than-solid episode of Family Guy that very well could have reached for the stars but perhaps preferred the more down-to-Earth laughs the show is more than capable of.