Family Guy: A List Of The Top 5 Satirical Episodes
One of the most irreverent and overtly crude shows on network television these days is Family Guy. Family Guy’s fanbase is huge, almost as big as its detractors, and when the show went off the air in 2002, it took just three years of incredible DVD sales and Adult Swim ratings to bring it back. One of the keys to the Family Guy formula is taking key points from 80 years of popular culture and mocking and satirizing.
The list of amazing Family Guy episodes is huge, but when you have 75 episodes to go, where do you start (that is, of course, if you decide not to watch each episode five times). Some of the best episodes in the Family Guy archive are those that take the most voracious attitude towards what they satirise. Without further ado, the five best satirical Family Guy episodes
1. There’s Something About Paulie -Season 2. In this parody of mob mentality in which Peter enlists to see that Big Fat Paulie, a mob relative from Jersey, is taken care of during his visit to Quahog, when he accidentally causes Paulie to give him a blow to Lois. Chaos ensues, ending with the wedding of the best man’s daughter and a tiramisu. Classic family man humor with some solid asides.
2. Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington – Season 3. Peter almost gets fired after missing work for a baseball game. The El Dorado Cigarette Company buys the company and he is lucky to keep his job. He is sent to Washington as a tobacco lobbyist, where he finally sees the errors of his ways after Stewie starts smoking and starts coughing. Classic consignments of political culture and movies are produced. He jabs at Bob Dole, Martha Stewart, and presidential candidates Gore and Bush.
3. Method To Mad: Stewie joins an acting school where he meets Olivia and a classic rags-to-riches story together ensues, after which Stewie fails and Olivia lives without him. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series occurs here when Olivia says to Stewie, “You’re the weakest link,” referencing the short-lived game show from the same era. Stewie responds with a prolonged assault on his intelligence in classic Stewie fashion.
4. Brian Goes Back to College: Brian loses his new job at the New Yorker for failing to finish his college education. After which he decides to go back to Brown. The Stewie/Brian label throughout the plot is fully established at this point in the series, so Stewie goes with it. Stewie loves college life while Brian tries to quit, unable to complete his last class. Academic battle, Rocky-themed, and classic college movie stereotypes make this a great episode.
5. Da Boom: An oldie but a goodie, playing on all the Y2K fears of the late ’90s. Airing the day after Christmas 1999, the episode follows the destruction of the world’s infrastructure and the post-apocalyptic journeys of the Griffin family to find a Twinkie factory they can live off of. The mutations of his friends and the reformation of the landscape are reminiscent of the post-nuclear classics of the 50s and 60s and Stewie finally becomes an octopus. The end of the episode is a flashback to the whole Dallas fiasco as Bobby is in the shower and Pam describes the “his dream” of him. The height of irony and satire on the near-mass hysteria the world nearly felt in late 1999.
Family Guy is more than five great episodes. Until a small part of Season 4 in 2005, the show was pure genius and each of Seth McFarlane’s vignettes in suburban Rhode Island is a joy to watch over and over again.