Family Guy’s 150th Episode: Good Idea? Or Sh** Idea?

This may be a little late to the party, but did anyone catch Family Guy’s 150th episode spectacular?

Let me rephrase.

Did anyone catch Family Guy’s 150th episode (minus the spectacular)? In case you haven’t nor heard about it, it’s completely different from Family Guy’s usual fun, wacky, random and varied episodes in almost every way imaginable.

The plot revolves around Stewie and Brian being locked in a safety deposit room against their will. Without spoiling anything, a disgusting idea or two is thrown around, possibly executed, and the comedy ends there. Simply entitled “Brian and Stewie,” the two are the only characters seen in the entire episode. No cut-aways and no flashbacks throughout the entire thing.

This is interesting for a few reasons. First off, people often complain that Family Guy’s humor is always deteriorated to simply inserting some inane, irrelevant reference and cutting away to it, thus hindering any actual plot-related comedy. This episode strips that away completely, and people still complain… a lot. Now, I’m not saying the episode should win an Emmy or be considered the hallmark of the Family Guy series by any means… however, you can tell Seth MacFarlane and his crack-team of super manatees (South Park reference; you’re welcome) worked incredibly hard on this episode. No, there was no breakthrough animation as seen in other episodes (particularly this season’s premiere with the dimension-hopping), but its simplicity is its mastery. I know plenty of people turned this episode off not even 5 minutes into it, realizing that it was only going to immerse itself much deeper in the massive pool of boring, which at some points, it certainly did. I watched the entire episode, and found myself immersed deeper in the pool of character within Stewie and Brian. Towards the end of the episode, it’s blatantly obvious that the writers were attempting to reach an emotional depth never-before-seen in Family Guy. Could this be a sign of a more tightly-wound, balanced show? Or was this just an exercise in Press Coverage? Either way, this was a huge risk.

My personal view, you ask? Why thank you!

The episode wasn’t a complete loss for me, nor was it a complete win. The fact is, it’s incredibly difficult to successfully 180 a television show in one episode. This isn’t what anyone was expecting, and that’s part of the downfall. The dramatic pieces within the episode were pretty well handled (again, more towards the end), but much of it just didn’t feel right. Pretend you’re building a puzzle, and you put a piece somewhere that seems to fit, but you keep looking back at it because you’re not quite sure that’s exactly where it goes. “Brian and Stewie” missed its mark, but not by too much. I think MacFarlane can actually evolve the series into a way better show if he only did stuff like this on more subtle terms and eased his audience into it. This season overall hasn’t exactly been spectacular, so perhaps this was what it needed to shoot itself back up into the limelight. Whether that was for the better or worse, we have yet to see, as the season still isn’t quite over.