Top 10 Family Guy episodes
For over ten years, Family Guy has graced the small screen with countless laughs, satirical spoofs and unforgettable musical numbers. To celebrate the release of Season 8 on DVD, we take a look back at the some of the show's best episodes.
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1. Brian Does Hollywood
Family Guy is known for pushing the envelope and having porn right at the core of this story cements that reputation further. Brian goes to make it big in Hollywood and ends up a porno director in this second-part of season three’s two-part opener.
2. Road To The Multiverse
Brian and Stewie go on another road trip through alternate universes using a special remote control. Including a post-apocalyptic world, a parallel world run by dogs where humans are pets, and the Robot Chicken universe.
3. Emission Impossible
Peter and Lois decide they want another baby and Stewie doesn’t like that one bit. Only one thing to do then, shrink himself down to microscopic size and enter Peter to destroy all his sperm. The first episode to feature Stewie’s nemesis Bertram, it’s not the last as he is also featured in season four’s Sibling Rivalry.
4. Airport 07
Taking its influence from the funniest film ever made, this is a great tribute to the brilliance of Airplane! Quagmire loses his pilot’s licence thanks to Peter who, with help from Cleveland and Joe, tries to help him get his job back. Several scenes throughout directly mirror Airplane! including one with the episode’s guest star Hugh Hefner.
5. Da Boom
First aired in Christmas 1999, this episode played on the fears surrounding the millennium bug as Quahog, and the rest of the world, paid the consequences of failing technology. As Peter has built his family a bunker, the Griffins survive and their search for a Twinkie factory to sustain them is partially successful. They do indeed survive, but Stewie comes in contact with nuclear waste and grows tentacles. The episode ends with Bobby Ewing (in a cut to a live action sequence starring Patrick Duffy himself) revealing it was all a dream and Peter fights a big Chicken for a long, long time. Genius. Closely followed by the fused together Quagland/Clevemire.
6. Patriot Games
Another episode in which the secondary storyline brings the best laughs. Peter ends up playing football for the New England Patriots while Stewie becomes a sports bookie. When Brian owes him money, he receives the beating of his life – several times – to Stewie’s cries of ‘Where’s my money?’. As the episode carries on, Stewie worries about when Brian is going to get his own back. Best scene: The payoff at the end when Brian pushes Stewie into an oncoming coach.
7. The Father, The Holy Son, And The Fonz
One of the rare episode’s featuring Peter’s father, this is essentially a thinly veiled attack on organised religion. Peter sets up his own church – of The Fonz – following an argument with his dad. Best scene: The stained glass windows in Peter’s church depicting Happy Days scenes, complete with images of Potsie, Ralph Malph and Al.
8. Love Blacktually
Dissatisfied with his current love life, Brian decides to slow things down when he meets the girl of his dreams, Carolyn. However, Cleveland soon sweeps Carolyn off her feet, and Brian must do anything he can do, to win her back, even if it means involving Cleveland’s ex-wife, Loretta .
9. I Dream Of Jesus
When Peter re-discovers his love for the painfully annoying yet seductively catchy tune “Surfin’ Bird,” Brian and Stewie decide to take matters into their own hands to ensure that the song will never be heard again! On the verge of tears, Peter goes to every record store in Quahog to track down his beloved jingle, and he runs into a familiar face and ends up hanging out with Paris Hilton and Perez Hilton.
10. Road To Germany
Mort Goldman accidentally steps into a time machine and winds up in 1939 Poland in the middle of the Nazi invasion. Brian and Stewie follow him to Nazi Germany in an attempt to save him and bring him back to the present safely.
Family Guy Season 8 is released on DVD on 2nd November 2009, including 13 extended episodes, 29 deleted scenes, 3 animatic episodes and 4 featurettes.
