Episode 15 - Three Kings
30 July 2009
Synopsis: Peter presents three parodies of the Stephen King novels turned movies: Stand by Me, Misery and The Shawshank Redemption.
The Good: Unlike The Simpsons, the writers of Family Guy give parody a much better fist with these Stephen King take-offs.
The best known movie of the three, The Shawshank Redemption provides the most obvious humour because of the feel good ending. Peter even points out that the multi-racial friendship was designed to add even greater sentimental appeal. But the easy comedy is well delivered as Peter (as Andy Dufresne) gives Cleveland (Red) directions to Buxton and adds “Now that I think about it I’ve been in here 25 years and all these landmarks are based on possibly outdated observations. That whole area could be a Wal-Mart by now.” Cleveland’s inability to find the Mexican village where Peter is cleaning his boat leads to the amusing final scene (see Best Joke).
Along the way to that moment there were other good lines. As Peter crawls through the sewage pipe Cleveland’s voiceover notes “Why he chose enchilada night, I will never know.” The modern day contrast jokes are solid too with Peter timing his strikes on the pipe to coincide with the clapping in the theme tune of Friends and choosing Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl to play to the prisoners instead of opera music. I was also amused by yet another Caddy Shack joke where Carter (the warden) and Peter can’t see each other around a table lamp. We also got a fun toilet euphemism from Seamus (the captain with wooden arms and legs) who was off to “pop out a pine cone.”
The Stand by Me parody had plenty of references to the movie version and Peter pointing out another plot hole after threatening Ace with a gun. Set in the 1950s we get a few racial jokes thrown in which are passable and Quagmire comments on the Playboy models starving themselves – “This one can’t be more than a 180 pounds!” The Family Guy jokes within the story were fun too with Stewie campily playing Old Man Pressman and Meg being the dead body.
The Misery plot was the least interesting, understandably as it is a darker and more stationary story. Stewie’s rant about Contact was fun if you’ve seen the movie. Jo losing his legs three times was ok as a running gag.
Flashback ratio (good-medium-bad): N\A
The Bad: If you don’t know the movies or the books then this will have been a lot less fun. I’m not sure why Magum PI references needs to be made a part of this episode either. The prison rape\farting joke won’t be to everyone’s tastes.
Best Joke: At the beach Peter is cleaning his boat and looks up: “Is that him? Oh no beach dog...where the hell is that jag off? There’s like twelve hundred bucks in that box!” It’s classic parody stuff and targeted at such an iconic feel good movie it works really well.
The Bottom Line: With a purpose in mind Family Guy can be really fun to watch. The parodies are pretty solid and in general I enjoyed the tone. In between the stories Peter is sitting down shooting his mouth off with amusing effect. He closes the episode by saying “Stay tuned for whatever FOX is limping to the barn with.” When they have a target, they can hit it.
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