Review: Family Guy “Faith No More”

Overview

When Brian becomes romantically interested in someone and it inspires him to use Stewie’s time machine, strange consequences result from their journey.

Cutaways

Soccer, Italian Tonies, Maury, Del Taco, Jewish Columbus

Our Take

One of the better recurring characters of Family Guy history in Alec Sulkin’s “Jesus Christ”…check. Brian & Stewie adventure…check. A rare time travel episode…check. The season 22 finale of Family Guy had all of the makings of a classic. Unfortunately, we get a very mid effort and if you long across the show’s pantheon of episodes where the show challenges religion, you’ll notice that “Faith No More” is a very middle-of-the-pack effort.

For my money, “Dead Format Records” is the best of this variety and Family Guy’s “Road to the Multiverse” somewhat toyed with the idea of removing Christianity from mankind before with the results being far funnier showcasing a world where the Dark Ages never occurred and thus humanity is 1000 years more technologically advanced (despite the existence of the Sistine Chapel in that universe, albeit done by John Hinckley Jr. instead of Michelangelo). In this week’s episode, we get a Jewish-dominated alternate universe followed by an atheistic one that doesn’t really last that long and unfortunately devoid of Johnny Brennan. Moreover, the producers clearly seemed spooked by the ramifications of South Park’s 201/202 episode by not bothering with broaching the Islamic faith or any of the other batshit crazy religions that exist in the world.

Because of this, this seems like a classic case of either the show, Disney, the networks, probably a mix of the three pulling punches that they shouldn’t be. The cutaway gags helped in buoy the serious nature of the dialogue from Alex Carter that seemed to play it safe but we got a lot of build up and a bit of a let down in the end on a topic that the show could have gone truly more savage on.

If you are a music fan, get ready for a few surprises. That said, it was even more saddening that an episode called “Faith No More” didn’t bother to feature any song from the band of the same name. Though, after watching this week’s episode, maybe it’s a good thing that didn’t happen because I feel like this episode was akin to more of a Chuck Mosley-fronted effort rather than anything on a Mike Patton level.