"Family Guy"/"American Dad" Review and Recap - October 8, 2007

Family Guy
American Dad

Original Air Date: October 8, 2007

Jeff L - TwoCents Staff Writer

Family Guy “Believe It or Not, Joe’s Walking on Air”
The guys are hanging out at the Drunken Clam doing manly stuff until the ladies show up for their girl’s night out. They start dancing and take over the bar. It’s a bigger disaster than Jack Black’s last movie The Unconventional Butler. The ladies say they might make the Clam their regular hang-out spot and Peter pulls out a gun and shoots himself, then wakes up and says he was having a Scrubs fantasy moment. Quagmire says it’s the best show you’re not watching, but Cleveland doesn’t like shows that cut away from the plot of the story for some bullcrap. Cut to Hilter on a unicycle juggling fish.
Six weeks and $8,000 later, Quahog Men’s Club is born in Peter’s yard in a cool fort that Peter used an entire wall from his house to build. They sit around talking about manly stuff and drinking beer. Later the Quahog Man Club inaugural ball is a huge success. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble even make it to the party. Stewie wants some Anacin, but Brain doesn’t think they even make it anymore.
Inside the house, the ladies think about crashing the party at the Men’s club. The women join the party and start dancing. Bonnie sits next to Joe and Joe tells her she should dance too. He’s depressed because he feels like he’s holding Bonnie back from having fun.
The next day Joe is feeling worse and wishes he could walk so Bonnie wouldn’t have to spend her life taking care of him in his wheelchair. He puts on his hand shoes and takes out the garbage walking on his hands, for some reason. Joe and Peter head to the hospital to check out the leg transplant. The doctor sounds like Peter’s father-in-law and they have a funny scene talking back and forth about how they sound exactly the same. Joe goes under the knife and the doctor pops in the How To video hosted by Jamie Farr.
Later, Joe walks about of the operating room and he’s still got that new leg smell. Joe wants to walk out but the doctors make him leave the hospital in a wheelchair. Back home Joe and Bonnie rekindle their romantic life while the other guys hang out at the bar watching a promo for the new Fox reality show Who Wants to Marry Corky. Joe shows up and takes the guys rock climbing where Spiderman has to save Cleveland. Cut to the Joe-bra Khan karate dojo. Joe kicks the guys asses, literally. There IS no mercy in that dojo. Then there’s a big dance number.
The guys decide they can’t hang out with Joe anymore because they are lazy and his new legs are causing him to run wild, but Joe doesn’t like hanging out with them anymore either, since they are all too lazy so he gets a similar group of new friends who are more active. The guys start auditioning for a replacement for Joe but the candidates make them realize that they miss Joe. They go to his house where Joe is moving out on Bonnie. The guys decide they have to “re-cripple” Joe. Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire all attack him with a pipe, a baseball bat and a golf club, but Joe defends himself and beats the men to a bloody pulp, but Bonnie shows up and shoots Joe five or six times until he takes the gun from her because she’s a terrible shot and he shoots himself in the spine.
Later, things are back to normal at the Clam and Joe’s back in his wheelchair. The gang’s all back to normal…except they are all in bandages from the beating Joe put on them. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

American Dad “Meter Made”
It’s a Goodfellas riff with Stan flashing back to his glory days of 12 days ago when he was a meter maid. Flashback to 12 days ago, Hayley wants to model nude for an art class and the Smith house is being used as a dog poop area on the 16th annual Parade of Homes.
Stan and Francine go out for a nice meal, but they can’t get a table because Stan isn’t as important as the used car salesman who gets the best table in the joint. Across town Hayley drops her towel for the art class, but Roger has snuck into the class and paints her nude. Later that night, Stan overhears Francine telling her sister that she wishes she was married to someone who was a big shot. Stan gets a ticket from a meter maid and he beats the man until he’s arrested and made to be a meter maid himself for two weeks of community service.
Everyone makes fun of Stan’s meter maid uniform and he’s sad that he can’t work at the CIA while he’s doing his community service. Upstairs, Roger has a naked painting of Hayley and she’s mad. Stan gets his meter maid training from a guy who’s using his meter maid status to get favors all over town. Stan takes to the blackmail and uses his newfound status to get the Smith house in the Parade of Homes. Turns out the neighbors all had their houses painted by a Jamaican celebrity house painter, but the Smith’s don’t have money for that so Stan tries blackmail, but the Jamaican can’t be blackmailed since he has diplomatic immunity.
Steve has taken a fancy to the naked painting, but since the face is cut off he doesn’t realize that it’s his sister. Both he and Hayley try to buy the painting from Roger who decides to hold an auction. Across town, Stan is emptying parking meters when he realizes that he can steal the money to pay for the celebrity house painting. The Smiths go on a crazy spending spree with quarters.
The art auction goes crazy and Francine buys the painting for $5,000 to hang in the dining room for the Parade of Homes. Forest Whitaker has a funny cameo as a parking internal affairs officer who may or may not be onto Stan’s embezzlement. He rushes home to destroy all the things they’ve bought while people are at their open house. Stan and Francine try to flush all the change and Roger gets angry that they destroyed the painting of Hayley. Steve finds out that the painting was Hayley and is horrified that he was attracted to her in the painting and Roger tells him to hill himself. Hayley beats up Roger.
The internal affairs officer shows up at the house, but it turns out that he’s just there to drop off the paper work about Stan’s community service being complete. He goes back to his boring life at the CIA where he’s carrying a guy in the trunk of his car to use for a retina scan in some third world country. He’s back to being just a regular, boring old schmuck. 3 stars out of 5.