Review: Family Guy “Fecal Matters”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Peter takes up being a nurse when he is able to withstand a flu going around, but finds himself in moral quandary when he finds his arch nemesis, The Giant Chicken, is dying. Also Brian finds out he’s part cat.

OUR TAKE

Family Guy sneakily returns from the break briefly to give us an episode with a surprising deep cut plot…and also a weirdly unfitting title. But yeah, as many long time fans will know, the mutual hatred between Peter and The Giant Chicken is one that has lasted throughout the series. So you would then think that, if they were approaching a topic with that much continuity behind it, they would remember the chicken is named Ernie. I get that they want to try a story where Peter overcomes his hatred to help out someone in need, but as we’ve seen throughout the entire series, Peter just doesn’t have that kind of emotional depth. It’s only through Lois giving a pep talk about how much he actually NEEDS someone to hate that he really gets down to helping. Only, the chicken’s appearances are so sporadic that I don’t know how true that actually is, even in the context of this series. I certainly appreciate there being an episode that reaches this deep into continuity for long time fans like me, but it also feels like they kinda just through it out there haphazardly and this was the result.

The Brian plot was…interesting? The joke of “dog character does cat things” was a chuckle worthy bit, since a fair amount of Brian’s humor is that he is a dog and still does dog things despite also acting human, so seeing a new take on that brought its own humor. Though I kinda got lost as to what he was trying to really accomplish with it at a certain point. The cutaways and random reference humor are still on point for the show being on its nineteenth season, as in it feels like the writers have found a groove that they are alright with and have settled into, not bothering to break out of it to really risk anything. Even the fanservice of addressing this recurring rivalry (which I’m not sure is what rivalry means, but whatever) isn’t really done with the sense that they had a neat story idea and wanted to try it out, but more like they felt like this a neat idea they could half-ass and then tell everyone they pay attention to fan complaints. Still, it’s pretty typical family guy quality at this point, no more, no less. We still have about another month to go before we see the remaining half of the season, so hopefully there’s hope for something more than this.