Review: Family Guy “Dead Dog Walking”

With Brian married after the first episode of the season, it is time to find out where that goes.

Overview:

It’s the second part of Brian’s marriage to Jess who was supposed to pass away from cancer but ended up surviving.  His misery gets the best of him, and he is ready to throw it all away until Peter convinces him that marriage is not so bad.  Brian takes on his new life and instantly falls into being overweight and lazy, in fact, he takes things a bit too far.  The weight ends up causing Brian to have a hip displacement, which means Jess has to take care of him.  All the work becomes too much, and she decides to have him euthanized.

Meanwhile, Chris is left to babysit Stewie but has a party to attend.  The obvious choice and plot are to take Stewie to the high school party resulting in the baby become addicted to vaping.  After falling into the scene, Stewie and Chris get caught by Lois which results in them turning on each other.  Thankfully, she teaches Chris that vaping makes you look like a douchebag.

Our Take:

You have to appreciate the way this episode begins by making fun of what it means to be a husband.  Is it true that once you become married, you have to wear khaki shorts and have far too many keys because it sure seems like that?  But, it is always a joke about women, that they let themselves go after they become attached.  It is just as much the men, and it is great that this show was able to make some great cracks at the opposite stereotype.

After watching last week’s episode with Brian becoming miserable with his new marriage to Jess, I was curious what the second part would be about.  I have to say, this was a brilliant place to go with the story.  The roles were reversed, just as Brian became dissatisfied, this episode he took his wife for granted and ended up making her miserable.  For a two-parter, that is clever, to reverse the look at each gender in the marriage role.

Finally, a TV sitcom said all the things that we’ve been thinking about when it comes to vaping.  It does look entirely douchy, and the apparatus itself definitely looks like a robot penis.  Though Stewie and Chris do not have many stories together, it is always a great dynamic to put the most intelligent and dumbest characters into a situation together.  This one will not end the way you expect, and I do not want to spoil it, but things get weird.

I also have to say that the start of the episode was my favourite part.  With a recap of what happened in Family Guy, they take us back to the pilot.  And, of course, to play the joke out until it is dead, they also take us back to the old Star Wars episodes – the best time of the series if you ask me.  This was a clever way to play on the old cliché “last time on…” that sitcoms have to do with two-parters.

Overall, I feel like this episode truly redeemed the last one.  Like I said, I was unsure where things would go after last week’s big twists.  I would have never guessed that they would pull it off in such a way that makes it all make more sense, and add depth to the previous episode.  I am also grateful that there was the additional plot of Chris and Stewie vaping, as it gave a nice break to the heavier plot going on with Brian.  Peter also popped up everywhere with some substantial comedy relief, to make the whole episode much more entertaining.  I wish I could go back and add a point or two to last week’s Family Guy episode score, but I will just have to redeem it with a positive score this week.