Review: Family Guy “Con Heiress”

Should this be locked up?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Brian’s made a new friend, a recently widowed elderly woman that throws lavish parties and gives him really expensive gifts. Eventually, “Count” Stewie joins him at the parties to join in on a scam where the duo get a bunch of free shit. Their exploits eventually lands them with this lady named “Pip” who apparently is the creme’ de la creme of rich people, but her husband is still alive and that needs to change…quick. We soon learn that Quagmire and a couple of others are in on this scam as well, so it doesn’t look like this jig’s gonna be up anytime soon. As a result, Quagmire offers Chris and Stewie a deal to help kill Pip in exchange for a split of the estate. When Pip dies, we actually learn that this lady was in the hole for a bunch of money or was she??

After fawning over their lawn care skills, Mr. Herbert offers Chris and Peter $600 a week to cut HIS lawn. However, Peter soon becomes the apple in Herbert’s eye, much to the chagrin of Chris who is stuck doing all the work. The two get into a fight much to the delight of Herbert who discovers the relationship between the two and decides to…um…leave.

Cutaway Gags

The Police Station, The Friends of Distinction, Zoo Keeper, Corey’s World, Passive alarm clock, Laughing Hyena, Herbert’s solo, Flip Joke, Herbert is Groot

Our Take

Herbert episodes and even appearances, in general, are few and far between. When they happen, they are almost always a home run. Some of the show’s darkest history comes as a result of the old man and this week’s episode was no different. The Chris and Peter fight pretty much showcased how sick Herbert gets, but the gag that really got me was the job offer to start the show. I mean, $600 a WEEK! WOW! Might be one of the best one-liners of the show’s 17th season.

I wasn’t as engrossed in Stewie and Brian’s contributions. Halfway through I was like, “this feels like a Quagmire episode” and there he was! However, I would’ve enjoyed the ride a tad more if we rode Quagmire through the entirety of this bit as opposed to Stewie and Brian though this might be Seth MacFarlane’s best vocal performance in a long time. In one scene, he was FOUR characters, and with two of those characters, he had to do that ridiculous last name of Margaret which must have been a logistical nightmare. In fact, you can tell when Tom Tucker came on, that line he mutters about, “I’m not reading all that”, I’m not convinced that wasn’t ad-libbed, and that’s despite the fact that Tom had a bit of a tongue-twister moment of his own. Anyone who doesn’t think Seth MacFarlane still is one of the elite voice actors of our time, this episode was a good reminder of that.

In terms of the cutaways, by far and away the best one was “The Friends of Distinction”, however, the Marvel fans are gonna love the Guardians of the Galaxy bit. It’s times like this I wish James Gunn was still on Twitter because he would’ve eaten this up.