Episode title: Christmas Guy
Series: Family Guy
Season: 12
Written by: Greg Meighan
First transmitted: December 15 2013
The Griffins are aghast to find that the annual Quahog Christmas carnival has been cancelled, and even more so when it turns out that it’s Lois’s father, Carter, who is responsible. Peter goes to see him to find out why, and Carter tells him that it’s terrible being rich at Christmas: everyone expects big expensive presents and he gets nothing. Ah, your heart bleeds, wot? So as a result Carter hates Christmas and, being rich and selfish (never a great combination and almost always one going with the other) he has decided to cancel the carnival. Peter vows to help him regain the spirit of Christmas, however despite some really stupid - and quite frankly disgusting and disturbing - ideas he has, success eludes him until he sighs that he had no idea Carter was Jewish. Suddenly, rather than be seen as a Jew, Carter reinstates the carnival. Nice one, Seth, you racist bastard.
So far, so terrible. Step forward, Stewie, for the love of Jesus and save this trainwreck! If only Brian were here instead of this annoying Italian mafia/Tony Soprano style dog they have now! Well, only one way to sort that out: bring Brian back! Only one problem: just before Brian died, Stewie destroyed his time machine, leaving him unable to bring his friend back. He really was dead. But hey, this is cartoons, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned watching and researching them, it’s that anything can happen, and often does. Usually though with Seth that’s just it: it happens, no explanation. At least here, I tip my hat to the writer for the way in which he enables Stewie to time travel again.
Despondent without Brian, Stewie goes with Vinnie to the toy store, where he sees, against all odds, himself from the past. This Stewie has travelled into the future - our Stewie’s present; bear with me - to pre-buy a toy that will quickly sell out. Stewie follows him, aware that in his backpack is the return pad for the time travel machine in past Stewie’s bedroom, so that if he can get it, he can (deep breath) return to the time machine in the past, use it to go a little forward in that past’s future to save Brian and then return to his own present with Brian still alive. With me so far? Tough. You should have paid more attention during temporal mechanics class. What? You didn’t take temporal mechanics? What kind of Starfleet cadet are you? What? Well in that case, sir, these gentlemen from Starfleet Security need to speak to you...
Anyway, the plan works brilliantly and Brian is saved, whereupon the “future” Stewie, his time line now defunct, vanishes, leaving the current Stewie (back in the present - you know what, this is getting tiring and confusing. Thank god it’s nearly over) wondering why Brian is making such a fuss of him on Christmas morning. With the timelines restored, Vinnie vanishes, never having been associated with the Griffins in the first place, and all is well in the world again.
Notes
Really, this is less of a Christmas story and more of a perhaps bowing to pressure to bring Brian back (though it may all have been planned, who knows?) and as the former it really doesn’t work. They would have been better just making it the Brian-comes-back story and leaving it at that, though mixing this in as a Christmas episode does work on some levels. The “main story”, if you will, sucks balls and is nothing more than an opportunity for Seth to spout his often hateful racist and religiously intolerant rhetoric; it’s wrapped up about ten minutes into the episode and is, really, throwaway and not at all important to the episode. It’s hardly even linked.
But it’s great to see Brian back. I had thought - along with millions of others, no doubt - that it was a stupid, almost suicidal move to kill Brian off. Yes, the shock value was there, but just as Star Trek realised you can’t kill a major character off just like that and not get furious feedback from the fans (and even Arthur Conan Doyle found his out a hundred years earlier) Seth must have known it couldn’t be a permanent exit. Whether people took to Brian’s replacement or not I don’t know; Vinny was all right but a bit cliched and I didn’t see him do much in the handful of episodes he was in. And his efforts o emulate Brian for Stewie, while laudable on one level, are really just painful. The Griffins without a dog would have been just as effective.
As usual, nothing for the rest of the family to do. I’m not sure Meg even spoke - maybe had one or two lines - Chris was as useless as ever and even Lois had little to say or do. At least Peter didn’t take over the episode, though he was given time to crap all over it with, as I said above, some very unnecessary and frankly horrible scenes which I did not find at all funny, nor appropriate for a Christmas episode. Yeah, yeah, my knickers are untwisted, but still, there’s no need for that kind of thing I feel.
I’d rate this as a total failure if it wasn’t for the subplot (which I consider really the main plot, despite the title) which rescues it and makes it watchable, even good. But never a Christmas episode. Without question, Brian and Stewie aside, the worst one I’ve reviewed here yet.