Episode 7 - Ocean's Three and a Half
29 March 2012
Synopsis: Bonnie finally goes into labour and Joe has a new baby girl. But he can’t afford the hospital bill so he borrows from a loan shark. To pay off the loan Peter suggests stealing from Mr Pewterschmidt, partly just to stick it to him. But when Lois finds out what they are planning she talks Joe out of it and gets the money from her father herself.
The Good: It’s a nice logical story to tell. Bonnie gives birth after seven seasons of being pregnant and Joe gets in money trouble as a result. The really nice logic is that Peter wants to steal from his father-in-law just to get back at him for being so mean to him over the years. It’s easier to imagine them stealing from someone they know anyway. Then of course the final punch line is Lois getting Joe the money by telling her father that she wanted to get a divorce lawyer.
The story flows naturally enough and creates one or two passable jokes. The loan sharks’ goons forgetting the witty one-liner they were supposed to threaten Joe with was one of those nice satirical moments. And Brian telling Lois that Peter was off breaking into her father’s vault led to about the only acceptable response Lois could give after seven seasons of crazy plots – “I believe you.”
The more random jokes which could have fitted into any episode were the usual mixed bag. Peter talking to his “Eye floater” is one of those jokes which defined Family Guy as a show early on. Taking something that almost everyone will have experienced and making it funny. Bonnie giving birth to a mini-wheel chair before the baby was ludicrous enough to make me smile. Finally Brian listing songs which were named after women was a clever idea. It’s not exactly a joke but it will get the average viewer thinking and enjoying the nostalgia of such a comprehensive list of the great and the good.
Flashback ratio (good-medium-bad): 1-3-1
The Bad: There are two major things wrong with this. One is the ideology of making fun of disabled people and the second is the time wasting use of music.
Family Guy has become more and more tasteless with its cracks about Joe being disabled and all the things he can’t do as a result. In this episode we see his wife changing him like a baby because, tragically, he is paralysed from the waste down and so can’t do anything with his lower half. Later Lois rubs this in for good measure by pointing out all the things he has to do with his new baby daughter like dance at her wedding or teach her to ride a bike. Except of course that he can’t because he is disabled. I don’t think it’s being politically correct to have a problem with this line of humour. The question I ask is what is the joke? The joke seems to be that handicapped people can’t do the things which others can do and in some cases are put in undignified positions by their disability. There’s just nothing funny about that. I can’t really believe many people find that idea hilarious the second or third time you hear it because the shock value has gone. So essentially the joke is about one of the tragic and unpleasant aspects of being a human being. More than that though, the Family Guy writers really rub it in by making the jokes not only about the handicap but about what people without the handicap can do which makes their lives “better.” Again I just don’t think beyond the shock of making that joke at all that there is anything to commend it. Even looking beyond the offensive nature of it, it’s just lazy writing. The joke isn’t about Joe’s character and personality, it’s just a generic dig at handicapped people. And we have heard the same joke over and over again in recent episodes (609, 701 for example). Come up with new material please.
The second problem here is time wasting. Family Guy has moved away from telling character based stories and has become more like an animated variety show, where we get bizarre references to pop culture from the last thirty years thrown in with anti-celebrity rants and some topical satire. If all these different aspects were thoroughly entertaining then I wouldn’t have a problem with them. But they just feel like the writers indulging in their own nostalgia rather than an attempt to make the average viewer laugh. Stewie’s version of Brian Adams’ Everything I Do video has no satire in it. If you are going to draw that video with Stewie in it then shouldn’t there be jokes in it? A twist on the video which makes it funny? But there is none. It’s just self indulgence on the part of someone who liked the video or thought it was silly and wanted to draw it. It’s not like making fun of Brian Adams (who released that song 18 years ago) is topical or funny anymore. Then we get Peter and Quagmire doing Safety Dance for no particular reason and Stewie playing the guitar for way too long without anything much to laugh at. Even the Christian Bale joke (see Best Joke) goes on for way too long trying to squeeze humour out of something which would have been funnier if kept shorter.
So much of Family Guy just feels like a waste of time right now. There just aren’t real attempts at satire, more just a collection of random ideas. An ostrich laughing at Two and a Half Men and Reese Witherspoon having a big chin are hardly witty satire either. And seeing Brian doing Stewie’s high pitched cynical questioning routine (from 407) reminds you of how obnoxiously high an opinion the writers have of themselves. Yes it was funny at the time but come up with something new!
Best Joke: While filming Terminator Salvation in 2009 Christian Bale was recorded ranting at the director of photography for walking around the set during filming. So here we hear Bale ranting at Peter who plays the protagonist in amusingly laid back fashion. As Bale is beeped constantly Peter comments “Whoa you are going to owe a fortune to the swear jar.” He follows up with a classic question which has some proper satire behind it “I just don’t get why we need another Terminator?” Having said that it still goes on for too long.
The Bottom Line: Offensive jokes and time wasting aside, I enjoyed sitting through a logical story for a change. Now let’s write some new jokes ok?
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