Review: Family Guy “Shanksgiving”

Overview:

Lois has invited all of the Pewterschmidts to Thanksgiving dinner, which is bad news for Peter. To avoid having to break bread with her family, he concocts a plan with his buddies. Breaking the law, they are hoping to spend the night in jail. Unfortunately, the plan backfires as they are sent to Rhode Island State Penitentiary.

Hoping to last the long weekend, the friends are divided into prison gangs for protection. Peter’s only chance is the white supremacist gang which requires him to shank Cleveland. But, will he learn his lesson before things get out of hand?

Our Take:

I would probably go to this extreme to avoid dinner with my in-laws. It doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea. Of course, it sounds extreme, but I guess it depends on how terrible the family is. Peter has gone through enough with the Pewterschmidts that you would expect he would be up for more. However, the method in which he goes to prison is standard every day Peter behaviour anyways. I could see him rubbing garden gnomes on his junk for fun any time of year. So, maybe this had less to do with Thanksgiving than we thought.

Speaking of Peter and friends being sent to jail, we should quickly touch on the random cameo. Sending the group to prison is Police Supervisor Chalmers. Designed identically to Superintendent Chalmers of Springfield, he goes into a quick narrative of how they are related. It was a fun little addition. Mostly because it wasn’t a prominent character, someone you would not expect to cross over. Though he is still easily recognizable, and the joke is as effective as it would be with any more significant Simpsons regular.

It is a strange place to take a Thanksgiving episode. But, it works well for the story. There is a multitude of things they could have done with Peter in State Penitentiary, but they covered as many of the low hanging jokes as they could while maintaining it as a holiday episode. Honestly, with the last two Family Guy episodes being specials, we could not expect this one to follow suit. Yet, it is not a lifeless sitcom drama plot that the show can fall into at times.

There was also a utilization of Stewie in this episode that was unexpected but entertaining. The infant Griffin proves to be somewhat of a regular at Rhode Island State Penitentiary. He has been maintaining relationships with multiple inmates via pen pal status. Enough inmates that his presence is a concern when it comes to having too many dates to the prom. The joke is taken farther, in good Family Guy fashion, when the baby ends up getting married by the end of the story. So, yeah, technically you could call this a wedding episode as well.

To be honest, Family Guy has been a bit of a roll lately.  With a slow start to the season, the show has bounced back with some back-to-back-to-back winners. Already, as it stands now, the eighteenth season is better than last years. Season seventeen lacked to have any great episodes relying on risky moves like director commentary. The series has already outdone itself and looks to be finding its form again. Of course, we haven’t even hit the halfway mark of the season yet, so things could take a nasty turn still. But, episodes like this one could help keep it above the average. This one could have been another flop that lacked substance and ended without satisfaction, but it was coherent, entertaining, and at times hilarious. We can only hope we are seeing a revival of Family Guy’s glory days. If not, at least they are trying to do better.