Review: Family Guy “Trans-Fat”

Peter is living his best life as a transgender.

Overview:

After Peter is left with no choice but to use a transgender bathroom at a Red Sox game, he is called out on the jumbotron for his bravery.  Enjoying the attention, he decides to embrace the lifestyle and goes for a full-on makeover.  After an accident in a bar, the doctors take the chance to complete Peter’s transition by making him a woman.  As Peter realizes that this isn’t what he wanted and how much of a struggle it is for those that do, he decides to have the operation reversed.

Meanwhile, Meg is a serial killer.  So, there’s that.

Our Take:

It has been a love-hate relationship with Family Guy thus far this season.  On the one hand, we get these boring two-part episodes, and you think the show is falling apart.  Then, they come out with unique stories like last week’s “Bri Robot” that pushes boundaries like you can’t find anywhere else on television.  The problem is, you never know what you are going to get.  Even an episode where Family Guy visits Trump at the White House didn’t deliver in the way that we thought it would.  So what happens when the show takes on the transgender topic?  It’s kind of scary to think how bad they could mess this up.  It’s either that, or they knock it out of the park.

Thankfully, the Family Guy writers are always so tactful when dancing a fine line of socially dangerous topics.  First off, you have to give them credit for even taking the main character in this direction.  There is no way I could see Homer, or even Bob, being turned into a woman, it only works for Family Guy.  Then, to take that topic and make it humorous without offending anybody takes some skill – well, I hope no one was offended, it is all in good fun.  The only thing that was kind of shocking was I would expect Peter losing his penis to cause much more trauma for the masculine character than it did.

As well as this episode was written, it was once again the background plot that took the cake for me.  At one point Peter is seen wearing a wedding dress in which he nonchalantly says that it is Meg’s outfit for when she murders people.  And in Family Guy style the joke is carried throughout the episode in moments that you would least expect it.  It’s these subtle background stories that are so clever and make Family Guy deserving of its recent pickup for another season.

As for the story, and not just the cleverness and tact, it actually held together.  One of the most natural complaints to make about this show is how sloppy the plots can be and how stories can fall apart as too much humour gets injected in.  So, when the show makes congruent sense, I always give it points.  It may seem silly that I score it better for something that a television show should do naturally, but Family Guy does play a balance of being hilarious and original.  So, this was one of the seasons most well-rounded episodes.