Review: Family Guy “Undergrounded”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Peter goes behind Lois’s back and gets a secret credit card. The spending and lying are enough for her to ground him like a teenager. Peter has other plans as he digs a tunnel in the garage all the way to the Drunken Clam. But, when showing off his tunnel to the boys, the whole thing collapses trapping them underground.  

Our Take:

Oof!

I’ll get it out of the way early that this was not that great of an episode. Unfortunately, Family Guy tends to suffer from some bad episodes each year. And, to be fair, so far this season has been one of the strongest in recent years. But this… This was not a good episode by any means.

To start things off, Peter gets himself a secret credit card behind Lois’s back. Now, if you can imagine what Peter could get up to with at least a few thousand dollars to burn, it would be outrageous. Unfortunately, the show writers lack the same creativity that you do because it was boring. The most outrageous thing he does is buy some lobsters for dinner. Sure, those lobsters inevitably purchase a much larger lobster that cooks the human, but it was no drunken bender or a ridiculous new wardrobe. In short, the whole intro could have been stronger.

Then, the second act involves Lois grounding Peter. Again, here you can imagine Peter reacting to being grounded like a stereotypical teenager. At the very least we should have seen Peter trying to sneak out a window to drive off with a boy on a motorcycle. But, again, not much energy was put into this plot either.

Peter jumps to the most unpredictable move of digging a tunnel from his garage to the Drunken Clam. Unpredictable is good, at least when it comes to Family Guy, but it is not the funniest of moves. He builds a tunnel which everyone inevitably ends up trapped in. As the episode wraps up, it leaves you wondering “so what”. Nothing really transpires from any of these events, it all just kind of happens.

There is always one hope that comes from these disappointing episodes. Hopefully, next week we get something entirely outside the box, and we remember why we love this show again. That is until we get a few more episodes like this one. It’s worse when a plot has this much potential for some brilliant Family Guy moments, and it’s wasted for something much less enjoyable.  Honestly, if you’re a fan of the series, this is one episode that can be altogether skipped over and you won’t miss one thing.