Review: Family Guy ‘Finders Keepers’

Spoilers Below

It’s odd how relevant Family Guy can be, even within the most outlandish concepts. Take “dad breath” for example. It is, as Brian explains to Peter, when men get older and stop paying attention to hygiene, then at a certain age, men begin to rot from the inside out. It’s something not only Stewie compares to the scent of Whoopi Goldberg working out, but also something almost anybody can relate to if they’ve had a 40-something mathematics teacher, or a close encounter with the any middle-aged male in the general public.

And this is how Family Guy’s twelfth season kicks off, with Peter’s “dad breath” interfering with most of his daily interactions, including work, sex and family time. Meg even risks her own life (although she may be suicidal due to many many other reasons) in order to avoid this pungent patriarch puss perfume.

After a quick trip to the dentist, and in order to quickly introduce the real plot, Lois takes her husband and the rest of the family to The Founding Father Restaurant due to Peter’s good behavior at the clinic.

At the restaurant, Peter learns that the establishment’s children’s placemat contains a treasure map to Miles Musket’s (the founder of Quahog) buried treasure.

After digging up the first clue along Route 2, and being featured on the Quahog 5 News, Peter induces the entire town to embark on a hidden treasure rat race, which results in violent situations and eventually splitting up the family… And yes, Stewie and Brian get their own mini adventure once again.

The episode has plenty of cutaway gags, which is no different from the past thirteen years… But, cutaway gags have become so apparent and mundane that the writer’s try something new here.

Merging cutaways to actually blend in with the plot as part of a storytelling device to even having the characters using the “this is just like the time” or “this is worse than the time” to take the story and characters the next scene (the best way to describe it is like saying breaking the fourth wall with gags???)

This won’t be the last play-on-cutaways, according to a sneak peek at this past weekend’s Just For Laughs 42’s live reading of Family Guy. More on that later this week, so stay tuned folks!

For more of this season’s Animation Domination rants and raves, follow @lloyd_toronto on twitter.