Review: Family Guy “Meg Stinks”

Posted on May 5, 2014August 31, 2019 by Tommy North

Spoilers Below

Last night’s episode of Family Guy was titled “Meg Stinks”. The title sort of sums up the premise of the episodes two plots, as it isn’t Meg that stinks this episode, it’s Brian. This isn’t relevant at all, just something I picked up on. Gave me my smart feeling for the day.

“Meg Stinks” is one of the final episodes of this twelfth season. Our story starts off with Peter and Lois checking out colleges to attend. When she gets an interview at her favourite school, Peter is stuck driving her all the way there. It’s a father-daughter road trip that makes them see that maybe they aren’t so different after all.

Meanwhile, Brian goes outside and is confronted with one of nature’s biggest threats… a skunk. Two exchange words and Brian ends up getting sprayed and destroying the house. After a tomato juice bath that fails to kill the stench, Lois decides that Brian must stay outside until the stench goes away. He has a rough start at first but begins to warm up to the outside world eventually.

This episode had many funny moments, and not so funny moments. I was laughing out loud at some points and there were other times I couldn’t even pretend to laugh. It was nice seeing an episode based around Meg. Being the least popular character of the family, it’s rare we get to see her center stage. Earlier this season I complained a bit about Chris and Meg taking the back seat a lot, but over the last month, I’ve found that they’ve been playing lager parts in the show. So much so that I’m starting to miss Stewie! But, it was interesting to see the relationship between Peter and Meg develop. They get involved in some pretty funny antics which I enjoy.

My problem is that I feel like we’ve seen a story very similar to this before. It was back in season five that we saw Meg and Peter buddy up, and get on the same page in a similar fashion. Maybe a seven-season gap justifies a similar story, but that’s all I could think of while watching this. They did end the stories differently though, so it wasn’t too bad. I think I would have preferred to see Lois take the trip with Meg. It would sort change how the rest of the episode plays out, but I think it would have been a little more interesting.

Brian learning to survive in the wilderness of the backyard this episode was great. The physical transformation that he makes made me burst out laughing, and just his attitude towards everything hilarious. Although there wasn’t much of a story to tell in this part of the episode, I enjoyed it a little more than Peter and Meg’s shenanigans. Stewie makes a couple of appearances throughout the episode and he was pretty funny as well. How Brian’s trials in the wilderness end is also perfect.

Overall, I was satisfied with this episode. It didn’t thrill me very much either. I found that a lot of the jokes were a little more miss than hit, and the story between Peter and Meg felt very close to something I’ve seen before. The jokes I did find funny in this episode ended up being very funny though. An evil Peter is a reoccurring joke in this episode, and I enjoyed him a lot. I would have also enjoyed more screen time for Brian. I found his part of the episode to be more interesting, and if they had Stewie out there surviving with him in the backyard, I could see a lot of hilarious potential.