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It’s another 15 episodes of Family Guy! We continue avoiding full-season releases so we can focus on shorter 3-disc collections so that Seth gets more bang for his buck!
The Main Characters
The Griffin family is the main stars of this show. Peter is the father and could be considered by many to be borderline retarded. There are no barriers between his brain and his mouth and often what he is thinking is what comes out of his mouth. Lois is his wife and is a little more normal than Peter. She is his anchor. That is not saying much since she has an explosive temper and could go off at any time. Peter and Lois have three children; Chris, Meg and Stewie. Meg is the oldest and is shunned by the family and the world in general. Chris is overweight and perhaps even more absent minded than his father. Stewie is the most intelligent of them all, even though he’s only a baby. He has quite the dirty mouth and he’s always scheming. He usually has the choicest lines in the series, too. Brian rounds out the Griffin family. He is the most learned, most well-versed, most well-spoken, and is a dog. They are quite the dynamic and dysfunctional family. Seth MacFarlane does the voices of Stewie, Peter and Brian (among others), Mila Kunis voices Meg, Seth Green handles Chris and Alex Borstein is Lois.
The Setting
Quahog, Rhode Island.
The Plots
As with the most recent Family Guy DVD’s the episodes on here are all uncensored and uncut so there are actually a few extra scenes on here.
---Disc One---
1) Fox-y Lady (24:20)
Original Airdate: 03/22/09
Peter needs to get a new HD TV so he does. The only problem with the HD is that the high quality is just too great. Ellen’s TV show actually shows her with fish-breath (which is kind of gross) and everyone’s favorite hot Fox newscaster is really ugly! The backlash is immediate and she’s booted. Tryouts are held for the position and Lois lands the job. She runs home like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory but she falls and skins her boob, mimicking Peter hurting his knee. This spurs Peter to write a cartoon with Chris and Meg. This little tale leads nowhere, but Lois’ investigation that FoxNews sends her on turns Fred Savage into the greatest actor in history. The show ends with them acknowledging they have no ending and it sums up the episode as a whole, just a 22-minute show where nothing really happened, and unfortunately not being too funny. C.
2) Not All Dogs Go To Heaven (23:42)
Original Airdate: 03/29/09
The family attends a Star Trek convention, where all the prominent TNG cast showing up for voice-over duties. Stewie get pissed when his question isn’t answered. Meg gets mumps while at the convention and while holed up in her room and watching a Kirk Cameron show on religion – actually finds religion. Brian then reveals to everyone that he is an atheist. Brian asks what God does and we have a cool God/Flash Gordon scene with the Flash theme song. So Brian is a pariah for being an atheist as Stewie takes out the cast of TNG. Each story was resolved in its own way, with the religion one being well done and the ending with a live-action Rob Lowe and Adam West was pretty damn funny. This was a good recovery from last week’s terrible episode. B+.
3) Episode 420 (21:53)
Original Airdate: 04/19/09
It’s funny that the title of the episode (420) aired on 04/19. So Quagmire gets a cat in the first act and really gets attached to it and the guys don’t like that their friend loves this pussy so much. So they set out to shave the cat and Peter ends up killing it. On his way to bury it they are pulled over by cops and Brian is busted for having pot. This spurs Brian to launch a campaign to legalize marijuana and gets a ton of followers through his song, “Everything is Better With A Bag of Weed.” It ends up working!! Pot is legalized in Quahog! A lot of Quahog ends up stoned and not everyone is happy about this. Carter Pewterschmidt gets Peter to help him re-illegalize pot so that he will stop losing money and then bribes Brian with getting his book published. Brian quickly sells out, his book flops, and he’s an epic failure. This was really funny; from the song to Brian’s failure at the end, and the Quagmire payoff at the end make this one of the best episodes of Season 7. A.
4) Stew-Roids (21:57)
Original Airdate: 04/26/09
Everyone celebrates the birthday of Joe’s baby girl (while we learn his son is dead) and Stewie gets beat up by her, prompting him to head to the gym. Peter unwittingly gives him steroids and Stewie becomes buff. Meanwhile, Chris is asked out by Connie D’Amico because she’s been out with all the cool guys and only the losers are left. She wants to make a loser into a cool guy and Chris is her pick. Soon, Connie starts falling for Chris for real. Soon Meg is sad because she’s not part of the in-crowd and Chris actually dumps Connie and now she is a loser. Connie actually goes to Meg for help. They embarrass Chris, and Connie’s popular again. The show kind of sputters to an end after that. Not a strong finish but some jokes make this watchable, namely the eating a horse joke. B.
5) We Love You, Conrad (23:05)
Original Airdate: 05/03/09
Jillian is getting married and Brian finds he’s jealous of this. He goes out with her and the fiancée and ends up sleeping with Lauren Conrad. He dates her but Lauren is too smart for him and corrects him like he did with Jillian. Brian does realize he still loves Jillian and he goes to tell her, only to have it basically stuffed back in his face. The fact that Lauren was in here was useless, but a funny cutaway (the praying mantis) and the late-night talk about Lauren/Brian, with appearances by Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno and Colin Ferguson provided some laughs. Another average episode for the season. B.
---Disc Two---
6) Three Kings (23:50)
Original Airdate: 05/10/09
This could be an interesting episode. The premise is Peter Griffin inserts him and his friends into three different Stephen King stories. The first is Stand By Me. It’s a coming of age story of four young guys who found a dead body. The four young guys are Peter, Quagmire, Joe and Cleveland. The nostalgia references are very well done by the writers and the whole thing plays as a very funny homage to films like this. The next story mimics Misery, with Brian as the writer (complete with Stephen King getting hit by a car joke), and Stewie as the crazed female fan. Joe shows up as a sheriff (and loses his legs and is a theme emerging?) though the thing kind of just ended. They end with Shawshank Redemption, and Joe is crippled, again. Peter teases us with a Shining spoof but sadly we don’t get that. The ending was pretty satisfying, especially the dig at the next show, which is just another Seth show. I hadn’t seen any of these three Stephen King movies, but that didn’t hurt my enjoyment of these three homage’s. I thought this was an ambitious episode, tying together both the Star Wars spoofs and the Viewer Mail episode that ended the original run of the series. One of the best episodes of the season so far. A.
7) Peter’s Progress (21:49)
Original Airdate: 05/17/09
This was the Season 7 Finale. Cleveland’s cousin from Jamaica comes to Quahog and reads the past lives of the gang. Peter was a guy from England named Griffin Peterson who had a thing for their version of Lois (Lady Redbush) but King Stewie wants her. He sends Griffin to the US where he creates Quahog. Eventually Lois comes back to him which brings Stewie over. A talent show decides where Lois will stay. Chris, Brian and Meg all appear here in various forms and this was a dud of an episode if I ever saw one. I chuckled maybe three times if that. This wasn’t funny, it wasn’t original, and even the musical number was weak. What a bad way to end the season. D.
8) Road To The Multiverse (22:00)
Original Airdate: 09/27/09
This is another Road To… episode for Family Guy and it lived up to the tradition of the others and in fact may be one of the better ones. This episode really just works as a way for the writers to get Stewie and Brian in as many ridiculous alternate dimensions as possible. They do make it to some funny ones, including a world where Christianity never existed (and Earth is now about a 1000 years ahead of where we are now), a Robot Chicken world (with Seth Green chiming in as Chris and the usual ribbing of the show), a Flintstones world, and a Disney-drawn world complete with song and anti-Semitism. Eventually they get to a world run by dogs and Brian wants to stay, but when Stewie is arrested they manage to escape when dog-Stewie and human-Brian help them. They return home with human-Brian but he’s quickly killed off to return everything to its status quo. This really reminded me of the comic book the Exiles with the romps through alternate universes and even though some of the universes were hit or miss, the hits outnumbered the misses. B.
9) Family Goy (24:00)
Original Airdate: 10/04/09
So there’s Family Guy an episode called Family Gay and now this. Are there any other three letter words that start with g and end with y that they could use? We start off with an awesome DC Super-Friends intro and this would be a sign of how cool this episode would be. The first act (as usual) has nothing to do with the rest of the show but there were some funny things in here, including Quagmire discovering that there is porn on the internet and Peter wanting to marry Kathy Ireland. So Peter wants to make it up to Lois for cheating on her with a cut-out and when they have relations it turns out Lois has a lump on her breast. This brings her to the hospital (where everything’s fine) and a look through her history shows she’s Jewish and her grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. Cue the Jewish Jokes! Peter wants to be Jewish, Weinstein from the great lost episode of Season 3 makes an appearance and Peter wants to become Jewish. When Francis shows up to tell Peter he’s going to hell Peter does a 180 and starts dumping on Lois’ new culture. Lois eventually stands up for herself and a timely appearance from Jesus help’s Peter with coming to terms about Lois’ Judaism. There were some funny cutaways (a retarded Rooster and a reference to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and the story drove this episode pretty well. A-.
10) Spies Reminiscent of Us (24:01)
Original Airdate: 10/11/09
The episode starts with Peter and Lois fighting over the bathroom and Peter decides to use Cleveland’s old house for his morning constitutions; that is until the new neighbors move in. Those new neighbors are Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd who are official government agents looking for Russian spies. Yes, it’s a Spies Like Us homage! Stewie and Brian get caught up in it; following sleeper spy Adam West to Russia and disabling the nuclear warhead after it has been launched. Meanwhile, Peter, Quagmire and Joe start an improv group (after Peter was told by Chevy and Dan that he isn’t funny) and they fail miserably. The ending sequence of the disabled warhead falling on Cleveland’s new house and him falling out of the tub is a great LOL moment. This wasn’t as heavy on the cutaways and the first act actually tied into the second and third which doesn’t happen too often. However, the cutaways they did use weren’t their best. Still, this was a pretty decent episode but 2 out of the first 3 episodes have been Stewie/Brian episodes so I hope they can shake that up going along. B+.
11) Brian’s Got A Brand New Bag (22:39)
Original Airdate: 11/08/09
This is the only episode I didn’t see when it first aired. Basically there was a Seth and Alex special (which was less than inspiring) at 8:30 with Family Guy on afterwards. This was the 8:00pm show and I thought it would’ve been a repeat. Well, it wasn’t. We start with a white men can’t run joke as Peter makes a reference to DVD’s and white runners being outdated. A DVD store is selling DVD’s for $1.00 and Peter buys Roadhouse starring Patrick Swayze. Peter learns from the movie that everything can be solved by kicking and he beats Brian’s ass, sends him to the street and a car veers and misses him, hitting Cleveland’s house and the tub falls out. But there’s no Cleveland of course. There’s a great scene of Peter beating up Lucy, too, after she raises the football from Charlie Brown. Peter drives home with his feet and he ends up rear-ending a woman’s car. Peter’s solution to Joe bothering him was great (referencing Ghost instead of Roadhouse) Brian asks the girl out but she stands him up and Brian ends up going out with the girl’s mother! So Brian wants to marry her until he realizes that she’s old. He cheats on her and he then realizes that she’s not too old but the damage is done, she dumps him. The family never liked her anyway. This was a weird episode for one big reason, the fact that Brian already dated a much older woman (the commercial singer) and there was no problem with that. The first act (which was completely unrelated to the rest of the story) really redeemed this episode. B.
---Disc Three---
12) Hannah Banana (24:12)
Original Airdate: 11/08/08
This is the best episode of the season by far. The great thing about this episode is that it actually had not one, but two 3-act stories. The first deals with Chris and the evil Monkey. The Monkey is not evil after all and just wants to help. He becomes Chris’ surrogate father and this bothers Peter. The two stop talking and Monkey mediates. This serendipitous meeting takes place as Miley Hannah Montana Cyrus is rampaging through the streets. See, Stewie wanted to meet her and Brian sneaks her in to her show. They realize she’s a robot and Stewie attempts to reprogram her. This fails. The two acts converge with Miley becoming like King Kong and Peter saves the day with his bi-plane. I loved that this focused on stories instead of just cutaways. Great episode. A.
13) Quagmire’s Baby (22:32)
Original Airdate: 11/15/09
Quagmire has a yard sale (which includes a hilarious Police Chase video of the Flintstones) and Peter buys a ham radio from him. He gets reception from someone he thinks is Ronald Reagan but is just an impressionist. Peter goes to get his money back from Quagmire and they find a baby on his doorstep, from one of the many women he slept with. Quagmire doesn’t want the baby anymore and wants to know if Peter will take it. Peter tells him he should abort it due to Wade V. Boggs. He ends up giving the baby up for adoption. The b-story featured Stewie with his clone, Bitch Stewie. Brian wants a clone and Stewie will only give it to him if he performs an odd task that was uncomfortable to watch. Luckily, the Bitch Brian was hysterically stupid. (I sharpened a pencil in my bum and now I need a band-aid). Bitch Brian saved this episode. B+.
14) Jerome is the New Black (23:13)
Original Airdate: 11/22/09
The guys look for a new friend and there’s some funny bits to start off (Quagmire hating Brian and a cut-away of people who only talk about their kids). They decide they need a new black guy. They find one, Jerome, and when Peter brings her home he finds out that he and Lois used to date! The rest of the gang love them but Peter wants to get rid of him. Peter throws a bottle of beer through his window in a rage and accidentally burns down his house. So Jerome stays with the Griffins for the time being. So Peter scares him off by wearing a KKK outfit. Lois shows Peter how great a guy Jerome is and Peter apologizes to him. Meanwhile, Brian tries to get Quagmire to like him. Quagmire tells him why he doesn’t like him, and boy, it’s harsh. This wasn’t as funny as Cleveland was this week but it marks two straight weeks of solid storytelling from Family Guy, with two storylines that were started in Act 1 and continuing to the end of the show. B+.
15) Dog Gone (22:47)
Original Airdate: 11/22/09
Brian is getting honored by the Rhode Island Special Society for Excellence in Literature for his book but he didn’t realize that it was a certain kind of Special (read; mentally retarded). He’s down in the dumps and drinks (ignoring advice from the Family Circus father), and drives home. His senses are dulled and while he’s driving he kills a dog. He buries it but Stewie catches the whole thing. Brian is ridden with guilt and comes free, but no one cares. It’s only a dog. So Brian decides to start a crusade for dog’s rights and let’s a Doberman go. The dog immediately kills another dog, and a cop, before it is gunned down. Stewie’s little one-liner after that was great. So Brian starts his own group for helping animals. This leads to a funny exchange between Lois and Peter about Peta and Peter, since Lois says both the same way. Brian is dejected at this lack of care at his rally and its Stewie that makes Brian feel better by showing him how much the family loves him. The B-story sees Lois hire a maid in protest to Peter’s messiness. There’s a funny callback to the Family Circus joke that is easily missed but was one I really enjoyed. Anyway, the maid story goes nowhere. If not for the subplot, this could’ve been one of the better-written episodes of Family Guy the show has ever seen. The jokes hit on their marks, and there was a certain sweetness to the story between Brian and Stewie that isn’t often seen. A.
Volume 8 Review
This volume really encapsulates the past few seasons of Family Guy. In between the great episodes were some real stinkers. For every Episode 420, or Three Kings or Hannah Banana (the three best episodes) there was a Peter’s Progress and Fox-Y lady. There were a lot of average episodes in here, too. One of the episodes I originally thought was average was Road To The Multiverse which has since grown on me. It is really a brilliant episode, especially when considering all the different types of animation used. I don’t think the show will ever reach the heights it did in Seasons 2 and 3 but, as this shows, even Family Guy’s average episodes and bring the hilarity and besides Peter’s Progress (which I thought was a huge waste) everything here had at least some value to warrant a sitting through. If Family Guy Vol. 8 were a comic this would probably be a Very Fine.
DVD Features
A) Extras
There’s a slight change to these DVD extras. Now there is only commentary on select episodes instead of all of them. I think it works better that way because 15 commentaries can be a bit of overkill, especially when people don’t have much to say. I love commentaries but even I have my limits!
---Disc One---
1) Audio Commentaries
---A) Fox-y Lady
This was recorded by Danny Smith, David A. Goodman, Pete Michels and Alex Borstein. They remember this being a pain in the ass because Lois working at the local station wasn’t funny and it had to be re-written. The “not-fresh-down-there” gag was based on one of Alex’ bits from the live Family Guy shows. This was alright but it’s always fun to hear Alex on here.
---B) Not All Dogs Go To Heaven
This was recorded by Seth MacFarlane, David, Danny and Greg Colton. Seth and David are big Trek fans, although Danny was not and he was the one who wrote most of the show. When Seth found out he wasn’t a fan of the show Seth bought every single episode of TNG so Danny could “research.” There’s an interesting story of David buying Gates McFaddon’s Star Trek Pinball machine. Wil Wheaton was excited to be on the show and he even stayed after recording to watch the animation and all. They mention that Meg episodes are generally better because Meg is the most realistic of the characters even though they bash on her a lot. There’s an interesting observation about how Meg and Stewie met their gods and both were disappointed. They talk about the different Star Trek series, including Voyager – which was plagued with bad casting. They end with thinking there must be a God because Adam West exists. This was a much better commentary than the first one.
---C) Episode 420
This was recorded by Seth, David, Patrick Meighan and Deborah Winslow. They talk about hoping there is no Cattitude store in Vermont, Seth leaves the commentary because Patrick is sick and coughing, and Seth starts piping in over the control booth. Seth talks about the marijuana ad spoof airing after the ads themselves had stopped running. The Bag of Weed spot is from the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang film. This was another very entertaining commentary.
---Disc Two---
1) Audio Commentaries
---A) Three Kings
Seth, Chris Sheridan, Alex Sulkin, Dominic Bianchi and Joe Vaux recorded this one. Joe jokes about being topless and Seth makes a Wreck of the Edmund Dicks-gerald joke. Seth chose three iconic King movies and King actually signed off on them to allow them to do it. Seth even plugs his newest book (Under the Dome). Seth calls this a very slick episode and in regards to the overseas animation it is only as good as what is sent over, which the animators (Joe and Dom) like to hear. Seth says Shawshank Redemption is a movie you can’t turn off if it is on television, a trait the movie shares with Showgirls. I’ve actually never seen Shawshank Redemption. Seth mentions that the show has had a chance to breathe more recently. They make a Friends reference in the episode and they say the show has not aged well at all.
---B) Peter’s Progress
Seth, Chris, Wellesley Wiled and Brian Iles recorded this commentary together. Seth doesn’t know what episode it is but he’s able to pin it down during the opening scene. An earlier version of the script featured Stewie as a general but it wasn’t working well so he became king. The Brian court jester was the gang’s stab at single-act comedians talking about their lives as if it is funnier than jokes. This commentary was around the time that Shutter Island was released. The orchestra records the music while watching the show and they constantly crack up when watching it. Seth mentions that Rihanna is a fan of the show and the Chris Brown incident is mentioned. There was a long battle scene here that was cut out because the overseas animation didn’t go a great job on it.
---C) Road To the Multiverse 1
Seth, David, Wellesley Greg Colton and Seth Green teamed up for this commentary. David complains that people didn’t know what the alternate universe thing was all about so they watched Sliders for a primer. Seth talks about an Eggs & Bacon song in place of Hallelujah from Handel’s Messiah in a world without Jesus. They wanted to make Japanese Brian yellow but he couldn’t get that green-lighted. There was a scene in the dual-headed universe where there is a picture of Chris with only one head which was pointed out by the Internet. The scene in ice replaced them going to an 80’s Bully Universe but it didn’t look good and was scrapped. They talk about the awesome Disney sequence, as well as the Robot Chicken spoof that was done by Seth’s team. The live scene with the dog (Wellesley’s dog) and the child (Mark Hentemann’s child) had a pixelated scene because the dog had a huge erection. They talk about wanting to do another Multiverse episode. They want to bring back Human Brian, too. This was a great, informative commentary.
---D) Road to the Multiverse 2
This would be the artist commentary and we have Greg, Raul Guerra, Darlie Brewster, Chris Finnegan and Mark Caballero commenting about this episode. Some of the animators say they are paranoid about injuring their hands due to the nature of their work. Chris and Mark used to work on Robot Chicken and were on the show during its early run. At that point it had been a couple of years since they did stop-animation. This was a little bit dryer as a commentary.
---E) Family Goy
David, Mark Hentemann, James Purdum and Alex recorded this commentary. Mark wrote it, James directed it and Alex starred in it. Alex informs us that a goy is a non-Jewish person. Seth has wanted to do this episode for years now and it was never done until now. David jokes that it was laziness that led to its creation. They joke about the uncensored scene of Peter and Lois in the restaurant and Peter has his dick hanging out. They joke about Quagmire using his left hand for his business and it getting brolic as a result. They used the left hand because they didn’t want to change the location of his house just for the joke. The commentary goes on to talk about Jewish people with the usual array of jokes, mostly led by Alex.
---F) Spies Reminiscent of Us
Seth, David, Alex and Cyndi Tang recorded this commentary. Seth talks up the movie Spies Like Us. Cyndi is funny talking about how she heard Chevy was an asshole and not talented. Mila Kunis actually laid out the Russian that Adam West used in this episode. Seth jokes about not getting into an improv group when he was in college. There is some great stuff here with Cyndi and Seth and the Chinese New Year. The Adam West dialogue was changed when talking about Michael Jackson because he had died between the recording of the episode and when it aired.
---G) Brian’s Got A Brand New Bag
This commentary features Seth, Danny, Tom Devanney and Pete Michels. Seth is not in the room but commenting from the control booth again. They get letters for the Lucy beating but they coyly mention that the character is 60 years old. Stewie’s crib originally wound up rolling into a nudie bar and singing wild wild west. Tom tries a Stewie impersonation and Seth says it’s more like a Liverpool Stewie. The gang talks about the Griffin’s Hi-fi stereo.
---Disc Three---
1) Audio Commentaries
---A) Hannah Banana
This was recorded by Seth, Danny, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (whose name takes up a whole line on the DVD screen), John Holmquist and Walter Murphy. The guys start the commentary like 30 seconds into the show which threw me for a loop. I thought my DVD was busted! Seth said that he thinks that writing off the Evil Monkey in this episode was its way of evolving the show and moving it forward. Cherry is actually a fan of Hannah Montana. They talk about humanizing the monkey and Seth relates a Borg/TNG story where the Borg befriended one of the Trek people and fans were pissed but the writers said that there is always a bit of humanity and they aren’t totally evil. Seth talks up Walter Murphy who does the songs for the show and Seth says he has a great sense of melody which is a rare treat right now.
---B) Jerome is the New Black
This was recorded by John Viener, Brian Iles, Michael Rundle and Kevin Michael Richardson. John does some great introductions here. They talk about a jam called Mofa kin Jam which is funny but caught by standards. The guys just watch the show and don’t mention much.
2) The Road to the Multiverse (10:09)
They tell us that Spies Reminiscent of Us was supposed to be the Road Show episode called Road to 85 but it didn’t feel like a Road Show. They talk about the Disney scene which made the episode. They started with the background and went onto the characters. The animators talk about doing that scene. There is also talk about doing the Robot Chicken Scene (although Lion-O is blurred out for some reason).
3) Family Guy Karaoke (37:26)
This is a fantastic features that’s been a long time coming. It takes all these great Family Guy songs and has a sing-along for them. The songs you can sing-along to (with the scene they were originally acting as the visuals) are: Gotta Give Up The Toad, Left Foot Right Foot, Road To Rhode Island (a favorite of mine), Hic-A-Doo-La, You’ve Got A Lot To See, My Fat Baby Loves to Eat, Yo Do!, You and I are So Awfully Different, Buy Me A Rainbow, You Have Aids (a classic), The FCC Song (another classic), When We Swing, Shipoopi, Noble Indian Chief, In God’s Eyes Everybody’s Hot, This is One Fine Day To Be Nude, Evil Monkey Song, My Black Son, Drunken Irish Dad, Prom Night Dumpster Baby, Sodomy, Me & Jesus, I Like Farts, G-Chord, The Handi-Quacks Theme Song, The Pot Song, The Friendship Song, and It’s A Wonderful Day for Pie. Sure some songs are missing but this is a great collection of tunes. I figure the other ones that are missing is because they don’t have the rights for them anymore.
4) Deleted Scenes
There are deleted scenes for 12 of the 15 episodes.
---A) Episode 420 (1:18)
We get a few scenes here. Brian tries getting pee from Papa Smurf (who spent most of the time smurfing off) and Joe (who thinks it is the pee fairy). There’s a scene of everyone stoned (including Trisha Takanawa), and pot is sold at ballgames (this was butt-scratcher call back).
---B) Not All Dogs Go To Heaven (1:50)
There’s a thinking seagull cutaway, a Zombie Reagan cutaway (where he forgets that he wanted to eat brains), and a trip to Cleveland’s church (which is just a white church). The last scene was good but it went too long.
---C) Stew-Roids (1:51)
We get a cold Asian parent cutaway (which is funny and it should be in a later episode) as well as Joe running Bonnie ragged in the bedroom (not what you think – she’s on the treadmill). Stewie plays make-believe with his action figures and they’re in a car rental store. That’s odd. Stewie and Peter end the deleted scenes by making fun of folk music – because real men hate folk music.
---D) We Love You Conrad (0:25)
Peter asks if Jillian she is a “stealth Jew” before he picks up his wedding cake from the Norwegian baker. Why not put this in the extended, uncut episode?
---E) Family Goy (1:12)
Joe tries explaining the internet to Quagmire but he says Giggity to everything and that’s why they don’t tell him things. The doctor is eating Lois’ tumor (which is disgusting) and Peter has a wound on his arm. He cut off skin on his arm to replace the foreskin he had circumcised earlier in the week. That tumor thing was beyond gross and distasteful, even for Family Guy.
---F) Brian’s Got A Brand New Bag (2:24)
Brian has his snout blown into and he falls over. Peter asks if he evolves much. Brian compliments a girl but she acts way too young with her texting and all. He ends up sleeping with another girl (who is addicted to her texting). Stewie makes a reference to the 9/12 terrorists and Peter hosts a penguin who doesn’t know what he wants to do. Brian brings home a half-black half Indian girl and Peter is his usual racially sensitive self.
---G) Spies Reminiscent of Us (0:29)
There’s a leper colony cutaway and a scene of Chris with his head above a hunter’s mantle. Interesting but not all that crucial to the show.
---H) Quagmire’s Baby (3:29)
Peter brings Reagan to Brady (who owes him $20) but Brady (who took a bullet for Reagan) tries escaping. Brady gets away and we are treated to a Bond-like intro. Quagmire reads a book to his baby but gets excited with the book. There’s a hamster spitting tobacco cutaway and Columbus argues about getting a city in Ohio while the guy who draws the map gets the country named after him. We end with Al Pacino in a slum Laundromat (You’re out of order!).
---I) Hannah Banana (0:17)
Chris tells Peter he’s a worse father than an alcoholic elephant.
---J) Road To The Multiverse (2:16)
The guys go to a universe where other people’s kids are interesting to you, we see more of the two-head world with Quagmire, Jesus being out of work with other religious icons, and we hear Handel’s version of Eggs & Bacon because this was the world with no religion. Eggs & Bacon is done to Hallelujah Chorus. Stewie gets Brian some wireless coffee and then they walk by Ben Franklin. He was meaningless in this universe because electricity was discovered thousands of years before so he’s a dancer here.
---K) Dog Gone (5:23)
Tom tells us there is no news tonight so he does news cadences. Brian says his idea is bigger than the idea of sex (I’ll take the grossest part of my body and put it in the grossest part of your body). Peter puts quicksand in the living room and Lois falls in. The quicksand is mostly cake mix and this actually segues into a bird being afraid of heights cutaway. Meg can’t even be friends with Consuela. Brian is at the Special Award Ceremony and Peter is actually there! Stewie has a “not very sexy party.” He’s in his sailor hat again but the women are all huge. Peter makes a “Rabbi giving obvious advice” cutaway. Stewie shows he’s a bastard by introducing Tina Turner to Ike. Peter’s tongue-twister will be in the newest Highlights magazine, an elephant guns down a giraffe, Brian frees the dog and he enjoys life but the kid gets beat up for letting it go. The kid sounds like Stewie and Stewie says he has based his character about him. Quagmire complains about having to take hamsters out of his ass and as Brian sits in the tub Stewie wonders aloud why he has to see Brian forced into it twice a year while he is voluntarily in it now. There are a lot of cool scenes here.
---L) Jerome is The New Black (1:21)
Peter brings in some KKK people but Jerome drops knowledge on them (their own feelings of frustration and all) and the guys are thoroughly schooled. We end with the Muffican Jam segment talked about in the commentary.
B) Audio/Video
The video is done in Dolby Digital Surround 5.1. It’s a cartoon television show so the surrounds aren’t really needed. It’s a standard DVD TV release. The video is nice as well. It is better than on TV since it’s in a digital format so that is all you can ask from a set like this. The audio/video is much better than anything else seen on previous volumes, actually.
C) Liner Notes / Packaging
This is similar to the last collection of Family Guy where they put everything in a single DVD clamshell with a slipcase. It saves plastic by having it in one case. There’s a one-sheet ad here that mentions all the Family Guy and American Dad DVD collections and there are a lot of them (American Dad 1-5, Family Guy 1-8 and the two Star Wars sets). Oh, and Cleveland is coming soon! A real cool addition here is the Family Guy script to Road to the Multiverse. Little things like that add a lot of value to the DVD (for me at least).
D) Easter Eggs
None
Overall Review
There is just one commercial to start this off and it is for two Seth projects: The Cleveland Show Season One and American Dad Volume 5 DVD’s (0:55). The TV shows themselves I’d give about an 8 out of 10. The extras, including the script, were nothing short of awesome and really pulls the direction of the final score. For me DVD’s are made by their extras. It is what separates it from something I could just tape off the television. Extras could make or break a DVD (for me) and in this case the extras totally made the DVD. The commentaries were better than I can remember in a Family Guy disc. Usually they are very boring and bland but a lot of these were really funny. A lot has to do with Seth. He was a lot more onboard for doing the commentaries here and actually seemed interested in them instead of being detached from the rest. The extra on just the Multiverse episode was a great addition to the feature episode, the deleted scenes are what they are and the Sing-A-Long (possibly keeping with the Disney theme?) was something that was long-awaited. The extras here make this DVD and it pulls up the somewhat average episodes on here and makes this a fantastic collection to own.
Overall Rating
9.5
10.0 Perfect
9.0-9.5 Near Perfect, Highly Recommended
8.0-8.5 Really good disc, Recommended
7.0-7.5 Good DVD, Mildly recommended
6.0-6.5 Above Average DVD. Mildest of mild recommendations
5.0-5.5 Decent all around disc, but catch it on TV
4.0-4.5 Great Movie but horrible DVD
3.0-3.5 Horrible movie but great DVD
2.0-2.5 There’s at least some merit to this DVD, but not much.
1.0-1.5 Horrible DVD, don’t even bother
0.0-0.5 Worst DVD ever
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