Episode 12 - Extra-Large Medium
18 February 2010
Synopsis: Chris and Stewie are lost in the woods and Lois fears for their lives. She visits a psychic who reassures her that things will be ok. Chris vows to Stewie that if they survive he will ask out a girl from school called Ellen. Once they are saved Lois continues to seek advice from the psychic and so Brian gets Peter to act like a psychic to demonstrate how fraudulent they are. Of course Peter soon believes he really does have psychic powers. Stewie encourages Chris to ask Ellen out and prepares his for his date. Ellen, who has Down Syndrome, is mean and demanding.
The Good: In modern Family Guy terms these are two pretty good plots. It was nice to see the entire episode hang together and not involve random sequences. The story started in the woods which led to Lois’ visit to the psychic and once they were rescued Chris and Stewie continued the bonding they had started in the woods.
Lois and Brian’s reactions to the psychic were understandable and consistent. And there’s definitely humour in Peter then getting involved, missing the point entirely and claiming to be psychic himself. I thought there was a nice mix of him both sort of believing he actually had a gift and just using it to gratify his selfish desires. His demands to touch the female members of a man’s family and to get free medical advice from a doctor were fun ideas. The final punch line with Joe wasn’t particularly satisfying but at least it brought the story to a conclusion in a way which means he won’t pretend to be psychic anymore.
Chris and Stewie teaming up was a nice change of pace. It would be nice if Stewie had a more consistent moral code where a story like this could tap into his actual brotherly love. As it stands part of me was waiting for Stewie to just stick it to Chris in some way. But he didn’t and instead he encouraged Chris to take action on his feelings and made him presentable for his date. I’m not generally a fan of musical numbers on Family Guy because they don’t seem to serve a purpose. But I will give this one its due, it was a well written song, with a catchy show-tunes style with some good animation. It was also strictly related to the plot and didn’t involve any other characters in an implausible manner. Like Peter’s story, Chris date didn’t end on a very satisfying note but it did set him back on his path and didn’t offend me.
The jokes were the usual mixed bag which you often get with a large number of flashbacks. But sometimes the simplest jokes are enjoyable to watch as with the snail riding on a turtle’s back “Slow down! I wanna get there but I wanna get there alive!” Or the Italian American guy caliming to be brave in a theoretical situation which was amusingly strictly theoretical. Stewie has a bunch of lines which may amuse some but the simple gag of him digging a hole to fit his massive head into was the kind of self referential joke I think works for anyone.
Flashback ratio (good-medium-bad): 2-4-1
The Bad: As soon as Ellen was revealed to have Down Syndrome you knew something offensive was coming. In the end the moral of the story was apparently that even people with this condition are just people, capable of being jerks like everyone else. But don’t let that or the presentation of Ellen as sociable fool you. If Family Guy was interested in political correctness then they wouldn’t have made several jokes about Ellen not knowing her own strength while hugging things or had her say “My dogs are mooing today.” If I were Sarah Palin I would let this one go, her name check was offensive but it would do more to help her if she pointed out the other sins of this show before that one.
A couple of jokes didn’t work for me and could have been tweaked. To have a joke about Spock winning the lottery and just have him tell everyone to “suck it” seemed tame. There are so many other jokes they could have made that that one was pretty generic. A very simple joke was having the local authority spokesman claiming he was optimistic of finding the boys while Joe ordered policemen behind him to look for corpses. But instead of some subtlety which would have made it an easy laugh they went to a wide shot which made it way too obvious. Peter’s Costello routine seemed a bit derivative too, there’s just something about stealing someone else’s joke to be your episodes punch line which annoys me.
So Chris understands Stewie now? I know, no one but me cares.
Best Joke: Peter puts on his own psychic show and hires a hotel conference room to do it. If you think about the kind of business seminars and shows of this nature which take place in hotels maybe you will see why I laughed at this exchange between two men in the audience
Guy 1: “That was amazing!”
Guy 2: “I’ve never seen a bad show at the Marriott.”
The Bottom Line: Better than usual, two plots that you can enjoy.
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