Stewie the Creator

When I read TV Guide's description for last night's episode of Family Guy, "The Big Bang Theory," in which Stewie unwittingly winds up creating the Universe with his time machine, I thought to myself, "That might actually be a good episode." And it was a good episode. It was funny and riveting, and the dumb, racist non-jokes were kept to a minimum. Also, the writers deserve props for managing to reference both Back to the Future and Star Trek: The Next Generation at the same time.

However, any episode of any show that deals with time travel is certain to have holes in the plot and nits to pick. This latest episode of Family Guy is no exception. Let's say that we buy the whole notion of the temporal causality loop and predestination paradoxes in general, and specifically the one that threatens to destroy the Universe in this episode.

For an evil genius, Bertram (Wallace Shawn) doesn't seem to fully think through the ramifications of snuffing Stewie out of existence, even allowing for the fact that the former doesn't at first know that the latter created the Universe, and conceding that Bertram understands that he can't kill any of Peter's ancestors since he doesn't want to delete himself as well.

One way to delete Stewie from the time-space continuum is to kill Lois before she gives birth to Stewie. But even doing that is fraught with the danger of consequences that could also prevent Bertram's birth. What if Peter is so grief-stricken by the death of his wife that he kills himself? Or, less melodramatically, what if Peter never goes to the sperm bank and his seed is never implanted into the woman who turns out to be Bertram's biological mother? Bertram's idea of killing Leonardo da Vinci (who is presumably an ancestor of Lois) has the danger of far more unintended consequences than killing a more recent ancestor. (And anyway how did Bertram trace Stewie's ancestry so far back?)

Bertram does succeed in killing Leonardo da Vinci. Stewie sends Brian back to the present and somehow "injects" his DNA into Leonardo's girlfriend (without having sex with her). But why would this be the thing to do that preserves Stewie's maternal line? Wouldn't that introduce genetic material that was meant to be introduced later? Or is that another predestination paradox? Wouldn't the right thing to do have been to extract Leonardo's semen? (Though I can just begin to imagine the disgusting jokes the writers would have come up with if this had occurred to them). In any case, Leonardo was already quite old when Bertram killed him. Leonardo may have already passed on the necessary genetic material, in which case Stewie's "injection" is completely irrelevant.

Lastly, I wonder how Stewie had the resources to build himself a cryogenic stasis chamber and have himself deposited in what was presumably yet to be colonized Quahog but not the resources to build himself another time machine (as Doc Brown did in the 19th Century in Back to the Future Part III).

It is precisely because the episode was actually funny and engaging that it is fun to pick it apart like this. I hope they do more episodes like this and fewer episodes in which Brian is complaining about his failures with women or as an author.

The magical sleigh

Last night's full hour Family Guy episode, "Road to the North Pole," was brilliant, especially in comparison to the other episodes so far this season. Nitpicking Family Guy had gotten to be very unpleasant, because it was practically beating up on a lousy show.

But this latest episode was a pleasure to watch. I don't feel like a bully when I point out that Stewie didn't have time to make those modifications to Santa's sleigh that get Brian and Stewie out of a rough spot just in the nick of time. One minute Brian is declaring that he will take care of Santa's deliveries, the next Brian and Stewie are off on the sleigh, up in the air. And if Stewie really did make modifications to Santa's sleigh, where was Brian at? So here we have a deus ex machina, with Stewie being the deus and the sleigh being the machina.

The episode takes a very serious turn for its last few minutes, almost bordering on preachy. This was the point at which I remembered my reason for sitting down to watch this episode at all (after the very obnoxious episode "Brian Writes a Bestseller" I thought I was done watching Family Guy): I wanted to see how it meshes with the pre-cancellation episode "A Very Freakin' Special Family Guy Christmas": for the most part, pretty well. The only thing is that the earlier episode leads us to believe that Lois would have taken care of getting the presents, and not relied on Santa Claus completely. Recall that in that episode, Stewie is disappointed by the first gift he opens, but then Chris prompts him to open the other present, which has that strong green glow that stands for nuclear materials; presumably the first gift Lois bought and the second is from Santa.

It feels good for Family Guy to once again be worthy of nitpicking.

Tired of Family Guy crap yet?

Maybe we were all too grossed out by the idea of Brian actually eating Stewie's crap to notice something Brian should have realized long before putting his nose to the diaper:

Remember how in "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do" the Griffin household degenerated into a pigsty when Lois went to jail? Peter, Brian, Meg and Chris are sitting on the couch, looking all dirty, when Stewie comes in, pleading for someone to change his diaper. "I can't fit any more in there," the poor baby says and then just falls down face flat on the floor.

Let's not forget that Brian has a long memory. There was an episode in Season 4 or 5 in which Brian got back at Peter for something that happened in Season 3. And if Stewie really is still 1-year-old, shouldn't Brian remember that Stewie survived the ordeal of Lois's incarceration despite so few diaper changes?

It was painful to watch that scene when Brian actually eats Stewie's crap. It felt very wrong. Now that I remembered these scenes from previous episodes, I understand why it felt so wrong for the character.

Not laughing on the way to the bank

You can forgive the writers of Family Guy all the inconsistencies about Brian and Stewie IF those inconsistencies result in very funny jokes. The latest episode really brought to the forefront how the writers are in a constant state of remembering and forgetting that Brian is a dog and Stewie a baby. So Stewie can go clothes shopping at DSW yet is completely clueless as to how to unfasten his diaper? What do you make of all the suggestions that Stewie engages in a lot of gay sex—does he take his diaper off for that (and what kind of sicko...)? Or is it just some weird kind of bravado? And don't get me started on Brian the sometimes dog.

There were few laughs in the episode, made far more worse by a pretension to profundity. It's one thing setting a live action piece all in one room, but animation frees one to go to any place. I know some of you are going to say something like "But they do go to a different place emotionally." Save it. This episode has nothing on the "Road to" episodes. Nor does it illuminate Brian and Stewie's complicated relationship any better.

(Oh, and great job Wikipedia linking "love" in their article about this episode to "platonic love." Even with just this episode alone you have to realize that Brian and Stewie are way beyond "platonic love" despite Brian's unwillingness. That's how Wikipedia is: slander real people but tread lightly with fictional characters.)

Remember Pearl Burton

In last night's first episode of Family Guy (the one preceeding the Almost Live special), Brian dates a significantly older woman. Peter's reaction is completely understandable (he's a tactless idiot). But the way Lois reacts has me wondering. She laughs in much the same way she did when Brian introduced Gilliam. Indeed, the whole family objects to Brian dating an old woman. But it's not the first time Brian dates an old woman. What about Pearl Burton? Pearl Burton had completely white hair. Lois even said "She's beautiful." Granted that Lois said that of Pearl's picture from decades prior, but she certainly must've realized that Pearl would look much older. Though this doesn't quite rise to the level of a nit because it appears Lois never met Pearl in person.

In last night's second episode of Family Guy, Stewie gets to meet Miley Cyrus while Chris becomes friends with the Evil Monkey. The Evil Monkey tells the Griffins his life story, which immediately made me wonder: "How did Chris know the Evil Monkey's back story if this is his first time talking to him?" But then I remembered that in the episode in which Chris told the monkey's back story, he just said "He wasn't always evil" and then we see a cutaway to the day the monkey made partner at his firm and caught his wife in bed with another monkey; I had just assumed that Chris had actually spoken this back story. In this new episode, the Evil Monkey says what happened, rather than just introduce the clip.

The perils of multiverse travel

The show: Family Guy
The episode: "Road to the Multiverse," first aired on FOX this past Sunday.
What happened: Stewie takes Brian to see a parallel universe in which religion never existed on Earth, allowing technology to develop at a much faster rate. When Stewie tries to return them to their home universe, the device instead sends them to another parallel universe. Thus, Brian and Stewie spend a great part of the episode going through several random universes, such as a universe drawn by Disney, a universe in which everyone has two heads, etc. When they arrive in a universe in which dogs own humans as pets, Brian smashes the device because he wants to stay in that universe. The dog Stewie from that universe recognizes his parallel Stewie, and, in a plot twist redolent of Sliders, he explains that he has created a better version of multiverse sliding and can return to his proper universe with precision.
What doesn't quite make sense: Alright, we accept the premise that you can slide between parallel worlds. (Note that the episode was careful not to use the word "world"). But why is it that in some worlds, Brian and Stewie were reconstituted to match that universe, but not in others? When Brian and Stewie go to the universe that is Washington Post political cartoon, their appearance changes to match, with Brian getting a button with "LIBERAL" written on it and Stewie a New Year baby sash; and when they go to the universe drawn by Disney, Stewie's head shape is normalized to Disney standards and Brian becomes less anthropomorphic. But when Brian and Stewie go to the universe in which everyone has two heads, one happy, one sad, neither Brian nor Stewie sprout a second head; nor do they get redrawn in the Flintstones style when they visit the Flintstones universe. Is there some rule besides script necessity for reconstitution or lack thereof?