Title: “A Very Special Family Guy Freakin’ Christmas”
Series:
Family Guy
Season: Three
First aired: December 21 2001
Written by: Danny Smith
Look, I’m going to be honest here: the
Family Guy Christmas specials, with one or two notable exceptions (and perhaps a few I have not seen; I stopped watching it some time ago) are nothing to write home about.
Family Guy seems to subsist on the idea of usually poking - not always gentle - fun at traditions, and Christmas is of course ripe for such treatment. Now, that’s all well and good, and I have no issue with it - providing you do it well, or at least make it funny. Look at how
American Dad (another show I have stopped watching) handled the idea of turning Christmas on its head, and yet managed to make it somehow not seem an insult to those who believe. Maybe. But over the years I have found
Family Guy to be getting more and more offensive, seemingly just for the chance to knock races and religions, and less and less funny.
This, however, comes from the third season, before Seth lost it, and while it’s not great it’s at least worthy of inclusion in this feature, if for no other reason than we see Lois, the usually solid, workaday mother go totally apes
hit and climb the Christmas tree, King Kong-like! But I get ahead of myself.
We open at the lighting ceremony of the Christmas tree in the Quahog town centre, where it becomes clear that the reason the senior citizens volunteered to decorate it was so they could arrange the fairy lights to spell out YOUNG PEOPLE SUCK! How they managed a) to climb up the massive tree in the first place and b) to arrange the lights without testing them I leave to you to puzzle out. Like much in this series, logic is not a welcome visitor and reason can go shove it. Lois is waxing lyrical about the Christmas season when, as usual, Peter arrives and wrecks everything. Literally, this time, as he ploughs into the manger and destroys it. Drunk as always, he dances around singing. Lois is not impressed. At home, she berates Peter for not yet getting a Christmas tree for the house, and he goes outside to chop down the one owned by his neighbour.
A visit to Joe and Bonnie’s - a place Peter didn’t want to go anyway, offering to ensure Lois doesn’t have to lie if she excuses herself by saying her mother has died, by offering to kill her mother - is not much better. Joe is drunk on eggnog and not feeling the Christmas spirit. Quagmire and Cleveland arrive to go wassailing and off they go, leaving the women behind. To his horror and intense annoyance, Joe tells Peter he must be the designated driver, so no beer for him. Stewie is intrigued by the news that Santa is watching him, and every child, and comes to the conclusion that the only way this is possible is if Santa has hidden cameras in the ornaments on the tree. That night he has a dream of being captured by him and set to work as one of his elves. Waking, he fears he is now indeed under surveillance, and may be dealing with someone who could be his match.
Peter is aghast the next morning to realise that he has mistakenly dropped off ALL of the presents to the charity, when Lois told him only one was to go, and the rest were the actual presents for the family. He really has no excuse for this, as he was the only one not drunk last night, but then, he does labour constantly under the crippling handicap of being dumber than a bag of rocks. Luckily for him, Lois takes his stupidity as an act of kindness, however unintentional, and goes to buy more presents. At home, Brian goes to check the turkey, not noticing an ember that jumps from the fire and when he comes back in the place is on fire! Stewie meets Santa in the mall, and makes a deal with him that if he brings him some plutonium for Christmas he will be a good boy.
Returning home, Lois sees the mess but takes it surprisingly well, considering the house is all but burned down. Peter, however, seeing his beloved couch and television destroyed, is less sanguine. Clearly, though, this has all been coming to a head in the mother of the family, as, as she attempts to cheer everyone up and make out things are not as bad as they seem, she finally explodes when she is told there are no kitchen towels with which to clean up the mess. She goes on a rampage, and Peter and the family, believing the Christmas pageant, in which Stewie was to star, and to which she had been looking forward, might bring her to her senses, head there. At this point, I should add, she’s scaled the Christmas tree, as I spoilered at the beginning. Yeah. They end up taking her down with a trank dart, and she drools her way through Christmas.
Notes: There’s a pretty good parody of one of those annoying Christmas specials that air on US TV, this one starring KISS, of all people. Ridiculous, but it does illustrate rather well the kind of crap you poor Americans have to watch during the festive season, and how any star or has-been will agree to be in a Christmas show to boost their profile, ego, ratings or all three. Stewie’s battle of wits with Santa is handled reasonably well, and Peter’s boorishness is not lessened for the holiday season. I do question though why, when he’s chasing the old woman through the mall in pursuit of the last pair of barettes, and they’re on the escalator, she a few steps ahead of him (and older) he doesn’t just run up and grab them? But instead he stands there as the staircase moves slowly on, as if he can’t or hasn’t thought of walking, or is too lazy. It’s probably intentional, to show how thick he is, but it’s a little unbelievable. Still, that’s
Family Guy for you.
It’s a little hard on Lois. She’s the one arranging everything, she’s the one holding it together, then when she finally loses it she ends up being a drooling idiot in the corner, missing Christmas. But Seth has never been one to care much about female characters - look how Meg is consistently - yeah, you really can’t call it anything else - consistently abused by, well, the whole family, but mostly by Peter. Chris as usual may as well not be there for all the impact he makes, and this pretty much applies to Meg too, though this is par for the course: apart from the odd Meg-centric episode, the female Griffin child is usually conspicuous by her absence, or just there to hang bad taste/abuse jokes on. Peter as usual is the centre of things, and does his usual moronic and ignorant job, while Stewie’s encounter with Santa Claus (culminating in his actually getting plutonium for Christmas, a nice touch) is okay but doesn’t really add much to the story.
The story itself is quite thin. Basically we watch the often sad breakdown of the mother of the family, while at the end she’s ignored as the family laughs at the television and enjoys their Christmas. Quite how the house got repaired on Christmas Day is not established, but again, Seth has his own world where logic and reality don’t really tend to make many house calls, and where things just happen because shut your yap that’s why. As a Christmas episode it does at least break the traditions of Christmas specials by attempting, in a rather ham-fisted way and in a reasonable speech given by Stewie at the end as Jesus, to explain why people behave - or should behave - better at Christmas, but as usual Seth can’t resist poking his finger in the eye of Christianity by mocking the Virgin Mary. I’m not a believer, but even I think this is in poor taste, especially at Christmas.
Oh, and why is it that when Peter slaps in his new tape of
KISS save Santa it starts at the end? Any reason for that? All right! All right! I’m going! Just thought I’d ask; no need to set the wild reindeer on me. Sheesh!