Episode title: Road to the North Pole
Series: Family Guy
Season: 9
Written by: Chris Sheridan, Danny Smith
First transmitted: December 12 2010
Ah,
now we’re cooking! As I’ve said before, if one tenuous and yet very strong strand of rope holds, or held, the entire
Family Guy apparatus together, keeping it precariously swinging over the abyss but not falling into it, it’s the relationship between Stewie and Brian. If you get an episode without the two of them in it, chances are, these days anyway, it’s going to suck. Add in the “Road” series, of which there have been, to date, seven not including this, and you almost always have a recipe for success. So to team that up with a Christmas episode and have the intrepid pair head to see Santa, well, you’re guaranteed a good episode.
I don’t normally do this, but as most if not all of the “Road” movies have interesting and different opening titles, with the usual song and dance (literally) absent, and the theme entirely changed, and as this is a Christmas episode which for once allows the cartoonists to reference the holiday season, I think it might be worth checking off all the Christmas-themed shots that are shown in these opening titles.
So, they are then, in order: Stewie and Brian in “The Nutcracker”, dashing across the snow in a sleigh (open but not one-horse), a scene from
A Christmas Carol in which Brian plays the ghost of Jacob Marley and Stewie is a frightened Scrooge, Brian building a snowman while Stewie builds a rather gay-looking strongman version of Rupert, Brian pulling a different sleigh down a hill with antlers on his head while Stewie urges him on with a whip, from atop a massive sack of presents, then Brian and Stewie as ornaments on a Christmas tree, the two of them camping out at night in a snow-covered forest, Stewie tobogganing down a snowy hill on Brian’s back, Brian wearing a top hat and smoking a pipe. Then we have Stewie staring in horror at something while outside Chris grins evilly and Brian looks annoyed, Brian and Stewie having a snowball fight, with Stewie about to launch a barrage of snowballs at Brian via a catapult, Stewie electrocuting Brian with the Christmas lights, the two of them as biscuits left out on a plate for Santa, a bite taken out of Stewie, the two of them filling Meg’s stocking with coal (Brian with a wheelbarrow full of the stuff wearing a hard hat while Stewie stands on a ladder and empties a bag of it into the stocking and Brian and Stewie making snow angels (though Stewie’s comes out as a snow devil - did they steal that from
The Simpsons or vice versa?). Note: none of these scenes occur in the show.
There: we’ve had some super fun already and there’s been plenty to write about, and we’re only through the credits. It starts in live action, with for some reason Seth’s actual father narrating the show, but that thankfully quickly fades out and we get a big musical number, which to be fair Family Guy are very good at doing. Brian is taking Stewie to see Santa at the mall, but the line is so long that by the time they get to the top the store is closing and they’re unable to be seen. Furious, Stewie decides to go to see Santa at the North Pole and give him a piece of his mind. Of course he can’t drive so Brian has to take him. He tries to fool him by bringing him instead to Santa’s Village, but Stewie sees through it. When Brian tries to talk him out of going to the actual North Pole, Stewie says he has to, as he intends to take his revenge on Santa by killing him.
Brian still refuses, knowing how long - and pointless - such a journey is, but Stewie decks him and next thing he sees the baby is in a truck headed north. With no alternative but to follow him, Brian sets off. Stewie causes a traffic accident when he sets off a flare gun in the cab and Brian’s car is also wrecked. Although he tries to convince Stewie that his quest is doomed to failure, as Santa does not exist, Stewie refuses to believe him. They make a deal, and borrow a snowmobile and they are on their way. Their fuel runs out though so they have to spend the night in an old hunting lodge, and head off in the morning on foot.
To Brian’s amazement (but not ours obviously) there
is a North Pole where Santa lives, and they have reached it. However, when they enter they find that instead of a Christmas toytown village with elves running around and wooden trains and cars and things, it’s a smoking, frowning industrial nightmare, huge chimney stacks belching foul dark fumes out into the soot-choked air, high wooden gates and a Santa who is very depressed and tired. So much so that when Stewie, recovering somewhat, declares he is here to kill him, Santa sighs “Thank god!” and encourages him to pull the trigger. He takes them inside, to show them that his elves have degenerated, after centuries of in-breeding, into a mutated race of simpletons and monsters. The reindeer have become feral, feasting on the elves who walk outside to die when it gets too much. He tells them this has all come about because kids these days want too much, and his staff are forced to work ridiculously long hours, polluting the environment and sinking deeper into misery and despair.
Cue another musical number in which Santa and his elves complain that Christmas is killing them. Santa then collapses, and while he’s being cared for Brian and Stewie deliver the presents, taking the sleigh. Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to whether this all works out according to plan? Of course they crash, the reindeer stuck up a tree and pretty soon they’re, well, murdering a family to cover their tracks. Ah, Christmas! Don’t you just love it? Having completely failed to do the job, Brian and Stewie instead present Santa, frail and ill in a wheelchair and hooked up to IVs, on the news, and explain how everyone’s incessant and greedy demands at Christmas for more, more more is killing him, and ask everyone to restrict their list to one present a year, in order to save Santa Claus.
One year later…
Santa’s village is back to how it should be, the elves are, well, human again and Santa is hale and hearty. Everyone gets just one present and is happy about it, and all is well.
Notes
As explained in the intro, this is a really excellent
Family Guy Christmas episode, which is really a feat, considering the dross they’ve served up over the years. But it’s mostly - well, let’s be honest, it’s all on the back of that partnership that continues to keep the Family Guy franchise lurching along when it should have been put down years ago. With a “Road” movie to buttress this story, it’s a whole different, er, story. There’s a real feel of Christmas about it, from the opening Hollywood-style titles to the songs and the setting at the North Pole, and the climactic ending, but there’s enough madness thrown in to make sure you never forget this is, after all,
Family Guy you’re watching.
The industrialisation of Santa’s Village is harrowing and well done, the mutant/retard elves clever and the feral reindeer a nice touch, while Stewie and Brian’s attempts to take over the Christmas delivery have hilarious and indeed terrifying consequences (Stewie: “Let’s be honest, Brian. This is no longer a Christmas delivery, it’s a home invasion!”) providing nearly - nearly - as much blood and gratuitous violence as the
American Dad episode. Thank Christ Peter is only peripherally involved in this episode, as he really would have ruined it, though I don’t get the reason Seth's father (yeah apparently it really is him) had to introduce and narrate the episode. Probably just wanted to feature. He doesn’t add anything to it, other than the expected crude jokes.
The crash of the big rig and the subsequent road accident, the trek across the snow on the snowmobile, the winking David Boreanaz in the sky, all classic
FG tropes and Brian’s struggle to try to let Stewie down gently over the non-existence of Santa, hit upside the head when he realises he has been wrong, shows the depth of feeling between the two - well, mostly from Brian’s side, who doesn’t want to shatter the kid’s illusions but can see no other way of dissuading him from taking the long trip. Quagmire’s contempt for Brian also comes in here, when he cuts the line for Santa and inadvertently ends up traumatising his niece, a cancer patient. There’s also time for cameos from a few well-known characters, including Seamus, the doctor, Mayor West and Bruce to name but a few.
But there are as usual questions. First off, how did Santa’s elves all suddenly normalise within a year? Or if these are new ones, is it possible for them to breed that much in one year and if so, what happened to the old, mutant ones with the reindeer gone? Were they disposed of somehow? Well okay there’s just that one question. I like the way the doctor elf left to look after Santa looks like a tiny Steve from
American Dad.
Without question the best of the (really poor)
Family Guy Christmas episodes. If only they left Christmas in the hands of those who know how to do it, and not entrust so much to the fat man, they might have ended up having better ones down the years. Oh well; at least one doesn’t suck.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS FUCKERS! 