REVIEW: FAMILY GUY “RATINGS GUY”

The Griffins are selected to have their television-viewing habits monitored, but Peter gets carried away when he tries to take over the airwaves.

Spoilers Below

The Griffins take a trip to the local Fire Department to see what it’s like to fight fire with fire only to lose to fire which ends up killing itself anyway. When they get home, the Nielsen Company sends the Griffins a family an invitation to help be a viewer and assist in choosing what good TV stays on the air and what gets the axe. After a demonstration utilizing puppets, Nielsen installs a box in the Griffin house and already gets attention from Tom Tucker where he asks Peter’s advice on how the news could be better. Joe and Quagmire aren’t crazy about Peter’s changes and neither is Lois, but Peter wants to do more so he decides to get more Nielsen boxes by robbing the salesman’s truck and grabs a 100 more.

First thing, Peter does is he calls Jon Hamm and tells him how to fix Mad Men complete with light sabers! Next, we get changes with David Letterman, NBC’s Dateline, and Cops with banana guns! This pisses off local cop Joe who joins an angry mob of local Quahog residents who want their TV shows fixed and as such sends Peter to the hospital. The doctor won’t help him though because  he’s with the mob! Pete gets sent home, but he tries to go to the bar but is shown the door and is turned on by his friends. To try and get Quagmire and Joe back,  Peter wants to fix TV by going to the TV producers guild to try and get some new and fresh pitches. J.J. Abrams, Mark Burnett, and Dick Wolf all get sent with new assignments except Kelsey Grammar but that seems to be enough because Peter fixes TV!!

Family Guy works SO much better when the guest stars aren’t always in the way of the premise and instead just randomly show up. Its surprisingly fresh in a line up that just takes its guest stars and makes us put up with them for the next 20 minutes. Guys like Jon Hamm and J.J. Abrams worked awesome tonight but by far and away the best guest star was Homer J. Simpson, almost as an F’ you to reviewers(like me) who claim that The Simpsons did it first with some of the premises that are written. Also, this week had a wealth of cutaways that were so awesome like the NBA skit which kind of hurt this fan’s feelings, the Hungry-hungry Alec Baldwins, and Peter in a sniper’s reticle. Take all of that and put it in a great premise and you my friend have a great episode of Family Guy that should keep fighting fire…with fire.

(9.0 out of 10)