Review: Family Guy “The Candidate”

Overview

After Mayor West returns to Quahog a hero after saving Peter and his pals, Stewie is inspired to one day run for mayor and soon finds out that Doug is already on the case running unopposed in a race to be class snack captain.

First thing’s first, Stewie opens up a war room with Brian and Chris competing as campaign managers. Unfortunately, Stewie loses the debate and Chris switches sides so Brian becomes the leader of the campaign really by default.

Shit hits the fan when Stewie learns he was a “whoops” baby, but Chris helps dispel this myth and Stewie wins the election. Oh, and does Doug die????

Cutaways

Lassie, Waffle Escape, Joe Singing, A Tweet, Paul Simon/Simon Says, Epstein Forever Young, The Hill, Doug’s Reliable Source, Shiny Keys Show, Shawn Mendes, Who Else But Quagmire?, Eyes Wide Shut

Our Take

NOOOOOOOOO!!! I hope that last part wasn’t true and that Doug (voiced by Chris Parnell) is just fine. In any event, we’ve had election episodes for Family Guy in the past before with all sorts of candidates running from the Griffin family, but this one was 1) the cutest and 2) the funniest. For starters, we had like a dozen cutaway gags, all solid, and when new episodes slow down and focus on one plot, I feel like the show gets to breathe a little and focus.

The opening bit with the Peter and the guys could have been a whole episode in it’s own right, and I was just a LITTLE disappointed that the guys didn’t stop off at Stoolbend when they had the opportunity. Another missed opportunity, all this talk about Stewie’s conception had me thinking that perhaps a Bertram (voiced by Wallace Shawn) cameo was going to happen as well, but…it didn’t.

In any event, Stewie’s bit was well-rounded enough and rife with commentary about current candidates which makes me wish this episode aired six weeks ago, but given that it seems like every day there’s an election here in America, maybe it doesn’t matter. There were definitely more than a few instances that I could see sister network FOX News maybe have a problem with one or two items that were mentioned in passing.

I would have actually liked to have seen the vote cast, maybe a bit more belaboring the point that Stewie was eagerly anticipating the results, but overall, this was a great episode to cap off the year for the franchise which has had a bumpy go of it in 2022 balancing the introduction of new characters (like this week’s episode) with episodes that feature premises that are long over done (I’m looking at you anthology specials).