Tooncrap #30 - Family Guy: Stewie Is Enciente


When Quality Is In Doubt, Gross The Audience Out
FOX: 2015

Written by: Raymond Gallant

Usually I try to give bad movies or episodes a little time before I give them an induction. Main reason being that maybe I jumped the gun with my initial anger over something, and who knows? In time that thing I found horrible initially only turned out to be mildly horrid at best. But considering the subject du jour is Family Guy, it's safe to say that this will still remain horrible years later.

This past season has pretty much cemented my claims that Family Guy is just a show built on shock value, cruelty, and nonsensical humor at this point. The well of good writing the show saw in its first four or five seasons has pretty much dried up and what remains is episodes built to see who can tolerate what's left. It was proven with The Simpsons Guy (and yes, that will have its day), and it was proven with the recent episode "Stewie is Enciente", where the show runners pretty much said "Yeah, we're going to go THERE".

And what is "there" exactly? Well, if you said "have Stewie impregnate himself with Brian's DNA" then you win the prize.



Here, have this expired box of Spider-Man cereal. The Fleer card is long gone.

So, let's waste no more time and see just how low they've sunk. Let's review this thing.



We open the episode with Stewie desperate to have gluten-free pizza with Brian, mainly as an excuse to do anything with him. Brian turns the offer down, which upsets Stewie, since the two were inseperable, like Jack and Jill. This leads to a cutaway that really isn't all that funny, but then again that's pretty much most Family Guy bits at this point.

We cut to the Drunken Clam as Peter and his pals are watching TV. After some classic mockery of dead children, and a viral video of an opera penguin (which goes on for too long), Peter decides that they should all try to be famous by making a viral video.



Still feeling ignored by Brian, Stewie tries to think of what could save this relationship with the two, when he sees that Joe and Bonnie have had a much better relationship when she finally had that baby after like 10 years. This gives him a brilliant idea that babies save relationships, so he and Brian are going to have a baby. You know, despite the fact that Stewie's a male... and a baby himself... and as the show has clearly made it way too evident in a decade at least, he wants to have sex with a dog.

You know the episode where Lois was carrying a baby for another family and eventually has to abort the fetus was considered too risque to air once. And now an episode where a baby can be pregnant is like "sure, people will watch. Fox will make money. You go right ahead Family Guy writers".



Stewie invites Brian to dinner to set up his plans to have their family, which just leads to a long and unfunny joke about Brian texting forever. Brian eventually leaves, because lord knows this segment needed to last longer, and Stewie grabs some of his fur that was shedded, which he can use to insert his DNA into him and they can make a baby somehow. Something tells me the earliest drafts of this had Stewie somehow getting Brian's semen, but even Fox is like "Yeah, even we have a line here".



Stewie adds some "hair and saliva" (Again, I doubt that was the original idea), and enters his device that even he doesn't know how it makes him pregnant. The next day he shows Brian a pregnancy test, and drops the ball on the dog. He doesn't take this well, as anyone could. He wants Stewie to have an abortion, which he won't of course.



Two days later, and the effects are already showing. We get a bunch of scenes with them getting checked up by Dr. Hartman, going shopping for stuff for the baby, and eventually getting a photo of Stewie's baby bump. And I'll admit, the photos with Brian's disgusted face is probably the only thing so far that has made me at least chuckle.



Oh right, there's a B-plot isn't there. It goes so fast that who can possibly care. Peter and crew see a frog dancing in front of some monkeys, which they feel is good enough for a viral video. You know, a good B-Plot is interesting enough to distract from the usually horrid A-plot, but this just feels like the filleriest of filler stories.



Back to the A-plot as Stewie's water breaks and the baby is ready to come out. Come out of where exactly is anyone's guess. He eventually gives birth in Brian's prius. They don't actually show where they come out of, but they say that the babies at least come out of Stewie's mouth.



They return home with their adorable sins against nature. Brian does eventually give in to the whole father thing, especially since the show has proven in the past that Brian is a horrible father.



Also, there's no interesting payoff to the B-plot. Nobody liked their viral videos, and one of them was Peter taking a picture of himself for a year with the payoff being a reference to the Grudge because... Hell if I know. Hell if I know why this stupid show does anything anymore. In fact it turns out that Chris is the viral video of the week for being fat.



Wouldn't you know it? Being a father and mother to a bunch of human-dog hybrids is a lot of hard work, and the babies are dying one by one. Brian wants out of the relationship, as Stewie finally admits his reasoning. It turns out that its all because both were having mixed signals. And the episode ends with them giving the dog things being given away to an animal shelter where they'll probably be adopted. Maybe.

This episode was bad. The main plot is disturbing, albeit toned down enough. It just feels like Family Guy has finally reached that point where its so out of interesting stories that all that's really left is to reach the bottom of the barrel when it comes to stories, and yes, having Stewie in a weird "Junior with a bestiality twist" plot definitely feels like the lowest this show can sink.

And then there's the B-plot which really has no reason to exist. There's never one laughable moment in that whole side plot, and with the viral video concept, they could have at least tried. It felt like the main plot wasn't long enough, and they were out of other ways to stretch jokes and do horrible cutaway gags, so here's an uninspired riff on viral videos as an excuse to have Peter in an episode
.
So yes, I didn't wait too long to induct this, but it definitely was bad enough that it didn't deserve to be waited on. It's a horrible plot, an unfunny episode, and another sign of many that Family Guy has become a desperate shell of its former self. This is tooncrap of the highest calibur.