Episode 21 - Partial Terms of Endearment
31 October 2010
Synopsis: Lois meets an old friend from Naomi who can't conceive a child. She asks Lois to be her surrogate mother and Lois agrees. But after conception Naomi and her husband are killed in a car accident and Lois has to decide whether to keep the baby. She and Peter agree on an abortion until he meets some pro-life advocates.
The Good: I suppose Peter's consistent belief that he was going to get into an orgy of some kind with Naomi was smile worthy at times.
Flashback ratio (good-medium-bad): 0-3-7
The Bad: As you would expect there was nothing tasteful or vaguely intriguing about how Family Guy handled the abortion issue. I don't understand who is laughing hard at miscarriage jokes. Similarly the lies of the pro-life group were so over the top that any humour drained away with each huge exaggeration.
The episode felt in many ways just an excuse to use up a season's worth of cutaway gags. There were certainly more than in any other episode this season and that doesn't include the long Wile E. Coyote parody where Peter tried to make Lois miscarry. The majority of the cutaways were barely jokes like Peter acting like a peacock or pointing out that sometimes Indian food can give some people digestive problems. Some were just uncomfortable like Lois being disturbingly emotional and sick while pregnant. Those jokes make me wonder if anyone involved in writing it knows what the punch line is? If not then it's just random shock value and you have to hope that one day it stops getting the show an audience.
Best Joke: Lois jokes that Meg is really Stewie's mum much to his shock. It's a joke of course to which he responds "Aww! Not cool."
The Bottom Line: A typically distasteful and irrelevant look at an issue surrounded by pointless 'jokes.'
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