It's my favorite TV family, the Griffins.
Victory is mine!
Go on, get out!
Housekeeping.
Bing bong! Mommy! Mama!
You're a phony.
Meg?
What do you want, a Cleveland steamer?
All right.
Bringing the good news today?
It's gonna rain!
Yes!
No...
Ah, that's right!
♪ Family Guy 11x05 ♪ 200 Episodes Later Original Air Date on November 11, 2012
I think at one point
I thought we would get to 200 episodes,
and then when we got canceled,
I thought, "No, we won't get to 200 episodes."
And then, when we came back,
I thought, "Yeah, maybe we'll get to 200 episodes."
And now, it's like, "Oh, crap, 200 episodes."
I'm so proud of you.
Way to go, Dad.
Yeah, you're a smart fella, Dad.
And you're a fart smeller, Meg.
Wait. We've been on for 200 episodes?
Wow. I'm actually almost...
What I've done is I wanted my weight
to equal how many episodes we have.
So I'm almost just about at 200 pounds.
And I plan to continue to rise with the episodes.
So if the show goes 500 episodes, I will
not be able to leave my house.
I've always found it really funny and I was excited when
so many other people did 'cause it meant that
was something that we all have in common.
We all find this funny.
This is a show that has never tried
to be anything more than something that
makes you laugh as often and as loudly as possible
within the course of a half hour.
== sync, corrected by elderman ==
Damn it!
Oh, my God. Peter, are you okay?
No! I am not okay.
Nothing about this is okay.
Inherently, like, in the show's DNA,
has the ability to go a lot of different directions.
We could tell conventional family stories that are very character driven.
I say it's four o'clock, away with you.
Stewie! Change it back!
No, forget it. Jolly Farm Revue is on.
It's the latest indoctrinating pabulum
for children with not enough to do.
Hey! Shut up.
And also, you could tell buddy comedy.
You could do buddy comedy episodes
with Peter and Quagmire and Joe.
Would you rather get a massage from a man
or a surgery from a female doctor?
Wow!
An then beyond that, Stewie's got this sort of scientific bent, where
it opens the door to tell all kinds of sci-fi stories.
Da Vinci must be my ancestor.
Good Lord!
That's who Bertram's here to kill.
So, that means you're Italian.
Of course, my love for SpaghettiOs and smoking on the toilet.
It all makes sense.
You know, it really helps having all those avenues to pursue.
Creatively, I've always said
this is the closest I've ever come to writing Monty Python,
where any funny idea that you have
you can somehow fit it into an episode of Family Guy.
It doesn't even have to serve the story as long as it's funny enough.
I got something for you here. What is it?
I caught you a bullfrog outside.
Poked some holes in its back so it can breathe.
See, look at this... Oh, boy.
All right, hang on, hang on.
I also feel like this show is unique in that...
Because it's animated we can push boundaries a little bit further.
Some of the things that our characters say,
if they were coming out of a live actor or actress,
would seem sort of off-putting.
Are you telling me that you have a problem with me being handicapped?
As a matter of fact, Joe, yes, I think it's immoral.
It's a lifestyle choice you're forcing on America.
We handicapped are a proud people.
Yeah, when you're not drinking and gambling on your reservations,
which we gave you.
There are things about the show that are
maybe gratuitous.
But the show doesn't set out to shock for shock's sake.
It also has to be funny.
Hey, what are you guys bellyaching about?
Sir, we are doing all that we can
to stop the killing of millions of unborn babies.
If you have a few moments,
I'd like you to watch this video presentation.
Yeah, I got a few minutes. My wife's getting an abortion.
The "Partial Terms of Endearment" episode,
the thing to me that's most significant about the fact
that it couldn't air was
that it was really
the closest we've ever come to a true modern day
All in the Family episode.
It's a women's responsibility to carry it to term.
Well, what if a woman is raped?
Maybe she should have thought of that before she asked me for directions.
Huh? What about incest, Peter?
What's incest?
You know how cousin Lou has that kid whose eyes touch.
So what, you're saying Touch Eyes doesn't deserve to exist?
Well, you don't mind him when you want a needle threaded.
I'm just saying that they should have at least have the option.
How can you say that?
Think of all the love he's given to Uncle Mom and Aunt Dad.
Okay, this argument isn't working.
Peter, what if carrying the baby to term
would endanger the mother's life?
I don't know what seven of those words were.
What if you look at the ultrasound
and see that the baby is going to be born with no arms and no legs?
You name it Mat.
Even in our crazy venue, which is Family Guy,
we felt we'd brought, you know, a relatively balanced
and sort of intelligent discussion
of a very, very difficult subject.
That episode was not controversial at all.
It's just like "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein,"
was an episode they felt that it was too controversial.
And it's not at all.
It's, you know... It's one of the nicer episodes actually.
Max, Max, Max, let's not deny our heritages.
You're Jewish, you're good with money.
I'm Irish, I drink and I ban homosexuals
from marching in my parade.
This is a story of love and loss,
fathers and sons,
and the foresight to retain international merchandizing rights.
This is the story of Star Wars.
We had done a number of Star Wars gags on the show and, uh...
They were so frequent that Fox Legal said to us,
"If you're gonna keep doing these
"we have to get clearance from Lucasfilm
"because there's just no way we're not going to get sued."
This will keep you warm until I get the shelter built.
You're sure this is okay?
Yeah, you're just cutting into the fat.
And we said, "Ah, well, God, that's the end of it."
You know, "We're not going to be able to do these anymore."
And Lucasfilm surprised us by saying,
"Yeah, no, we like this."
What started as a small idea became
a one hour parody of Star Wars that Alex Sulkin wrote.
Beep boop beep.
He says there are several creatures approaching from the southeast.
That's not what I said.
I said there ain't a pack of menthols on this planet.
I'm a huge Star Wars fan from way back as a kid,
as many of us are.
Okay, so the door's going to open and you guys say, "Freeze,"
and point your guns at 'em.
Or, you know... Or should it just be me?
Yeah, you know what, I think that'd be better.
Get out, go, go, go. Just me.
Oh, I wasn't ready... Hi!
Those were very fun for me to work on.
Knowing every line of those movies inside and out,
it was fun to kind of go through it and make fun of it.
You know, tell the jokes that you'd always think of saying.
Where am I? Jabba's Palace.
Who are you?
Someone who loves you.
Whoa, you are smothering me and I need my space.
Some of my favorite gags from the series
come out of some of those episodes.
I love in the first Star Wars episode
when they're in the trash compactor
and Peter finds an old ratty couch.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop, stop, stop, stop.
What? What? What?
What? No, no, no, twist it.
I am. No, no, no, no.
No, no, no, other way. You're twisting it the wrong way.
Which way? What do you want me to do?
Just look down, all right? Just look at me, look what I'm doing.
Yeah. All right, see the way I'm twisting it?
Yeah. All right, turn it that way from your end.
Okay. Okay, just...
No, no, no, no... What?
All right, hey, just put it down.
Put it down, just drop it. All right.
We were able to use all that great John Williams music.
I mean, they really gave us the tools to do this right, and...
And it was because they trusted us.
They knew that we were fans and that we weren't gonna...
We weren't gonna destroy their property.
I say, Brian, look, three rows down. What?
Is that Tom Bosley?
What would Tom Bosley be doing on a train in Switzerland?
I'm almost certain.
Tom!
Did he look? I don't know.
Well, if I yell, you have to watch.
Tom Bosley!
No, it's not him. Huh.
The Road shows have been a lot of fun.
We started with "Road to Rhode Island" in season one.
And, uh, Seth had this idea to do an episode
based on those Bob Hope, Bing Crosby Road shows.
Seth, as you probably know, loves Bob Hope.
And, you know, is very familiar with those movies
and the music from those movies and...
So, I think that having "Road to..."
with Brian and Stewie,
they're sort of our Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
Up until that point Stewie had kind of existed in his own world.
He would talk to Rupert and hatch diabolical schemes.
And Brian meanwhile was kind of Peter's sidekick.
And they were kind of separate.
And this was the first time we kind of paired those two,
and it just clicked.
Okay, if everything worked properly
this should be the exact time and place that Mort was sent to.
Now, we've just got to figure out where we are.
Or when we are.
Oh, that's such a douche time traveler thing to say.
From that point forward we started
pairing Stewie and Brian together on stories,
'cause they were so good together.
And it's a perfect example of how you can
create a show and then
your writing style... Other people coming in,
in this case, the writing staff,
can find things in your characters that you didn't see initially.
The Brian-Stewie relationship which now seems so obvious
was not something that I thought of when
I was creating the show.
They're always sort of busting each other's chops
and, uh, antagonistic towards each other,
but they're also...
I think they've evolved into their best friends.
Can I just say before... Can we just like take two...
I love... You're so brave.
I just love how brave you're being right now.
This is like the closest I've ever felt to you.
Okay. Oh, my God, I was thinking the same thing.
We are so us right now.
Do you know that?
And the Brian-Stewie episode,
more than anything, we did to explore whether or not
two animated characters
with just a single room can sustain a half hour
purely on the strength of their characters.
We thought that it might be interesting to try an episode
where it was almost like watching a play.
Where it was one location, two people on stage,
no cutaways, nothing, just dialogue for 22 minutes.
It was very polarizing.
People either loved it or they hated it.
They thought it was revolutionary,
or they thought it was just...
You know, they couldn't get past the Stewie diaper thing.
Look!
He's dead.
Oh, my God.
Nice.
"And Then There Were Fewer" was our first 16x9 episode,
when we went from this to this.
And, um, we thought we'd do this big splashy visual episode.
I love that episode because it's the first time
we've really told a story that complex.
So James Woods murdered Stephanie and then he murdered himself.
Criss-cross.
The animators did an amazing job.
The artists and the directors
and everybody that worked on that.
It looks so great to watch
and the score is amazing.
It's just a lush score all the way throughout.
We use anywhere from a 50 to,
in some cases, a 90-piece orchestra for every episode of the show.
Even if people don't know that what they're hearing is live music,
is a live orchestra,
on a subconscious level it classes up the show.
I know that it happens to be one of Seth's favorite episodes to this day.
And I think he really liked approaching it like a movie.
Mr. Peter.
Mr. Joe.
Mr. Bonnie.
She doesn't know what "mister" means.
Mr. Mort.
Mr. Muriel.
Mayor West Mister.
Oh, my God, seriously.
♪ Take me out to place tonight
♪ To a bathroom stall delight
♪ Where a girl will help you empty
♪ Every last electrolyte
♪ Now everybody gather 'round and listen if you would
♪ When I tell you every person needs a way of feeling good
♪ Every kitty needs a ball of string and every dog a stick
♪ But all you need is a bag of weed to really get a kick ♪
♪ Me and Jesus
♪ Come and hug and squeezes
♪ 'Cause you know that he's a simply Christ-errific dude ♪
We do a lot of musical numbers in Family Guy.
Which is fun for us. Seth is a big music fan.
And he's very skilled at executing them.
♪ Now a woman who'll kiss on a very first date
♪ Is usually a hussy
♪ And a woman who'll kiss on the second time out
♪ Is anything but fussy
♪ But a woman who'll wait 'till the third time around
♪ Head in the clouds, feet on the ground
♪ She's the girl he's glad he's found
♪ She's his Shipoopi
Shipoopi was so elaborately choreographed
and then the visuals,
which Dan Povenmire, the director, spent a ton of time working on,
really hit every point in the orchestration.
And the thing that I've always loved about the show is...
When I talk to my son and his friends, you know,
they don't know what Shipoopi is.
They might not know, you know, who Gene Kelly was,
but they're loving the musical, you know, segments.
And it's like, how did Seth make
10 million teenage boys fans of musicals?
♪ It's a wonderful day for pie
♪ You can ask all the birds in the sky
♪ And they'll tell you real sweet, with a musical tweet
♪ It's a wonderful day for pie ♪
Our season seven premiere was an episode called "Road to the Multiverse."
And there's this great musical number called
It's A Wonderful Day for Pie,
which is, you know, as devoid of content as it sounds.
It's just about Peter and Lois singing about how much they love pie.
But the animation in that sequence is amazing.
Visually, it was just fantastic to see our characters
animated in a Disney style.
I just thought that was so well done.
And it was a lot of fun.
Uh, and we sort of improvised
some of the lyrics in the room.
Seth just came out with...
♪ It's a wonderful day for pie
And one of us goes...
♪ And it smells so much better than I ♪
It was Cleveland as a skunk and it just came together.
And, uh, that was a great piece. One of my favorites.
♪ I know you just can't wait to stare
♪ At all that luscious orange hair
♪ But, boy, before you touch a single curl
♪ You must impress that ultra-bloomin'
♪ All-consumin', poorly groomin'
♪ Down's Syndrome girl
The Down's Syndrome Girl song was fun for me because
it was the first time I had written lyrics and a tune.
Which I basically went in and sang for Walter Murphy
who then arranged it and actually made it >sound good.
It's a lot of fun for us to...
You know, to write a song lyric and have a great composer
like Walter Murphy or Ron Jones set it to music.
♪ Each bell would peal with a silvery zeal
♪ As the holiday feeling was filling us
♪ But now instead, all we're feeling is dread
♪ Because Christmastime is killing us ♪
When we did our Christmas episode,
I had originally envisioned something like Rudolph
that had, like, four or five, six musical numbers in it.
We ended up, like, doing two or three.
And I had written this lyric about how...
I was making a comment on how crazy Christmas has become
and what it takes out of us all.
And when the smoke cleared, it was a success.
And we were nominated for an Emmy.
But also, a great unexpected thrill was
we were nominated for a Grammy.
♪ You have AIDS ♪ Yes, you have AIDS
♪ Not HIV but full blown AIDS ♪
I think the first song that the barbershop quartet did
was the AIDS song.
And that's a perfect example of another reason
for using that orchestra and trying to be so musically legit.
Because it allows you to get away with content
that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get away with.
Yeah, talk about making a subject matter a little more palatable.
People love the absurdity of these guys singing such
an outrageous lyric,
but what Seth appreciates about it is
how unbelievably talented these guys are and were
in these pieces, musically.
It provides a musical cushion
that prevents you from being completely crass,
if you're being that crass in the first place.
♪ You'll never have to wear a condom
♪ When you do it with your wife
♪ Or anyone else you do it with
♪ We promise not to tell
I also like the little things that we do here and there,
like, Stewie singing little folk songs,
Stewie making up his own, you know, little songs,
talking about, you know, "Playing the G-chord
"and here we go to the D-chord."
♪ Then Brian comes in and I change up the tempo
♪ Brian comes in and it changes the song
♪ Looking at me like he thinks I'm a douche bag
♪ But he's gonna learn pretty fast that he's wrong
♪ Hey, Brian, why are you bringing me down, man?
♪ Why are you bringing me down?
♪ Don't bring me down!
Music and lyrics by Stewie Griffin.
It's amazing to me that the show has had
the cultural impact that it has.
For a long while, The Simpsons was really the only show
that had broken out in this way
and I always hoped we would have a prayer of
maybe doing that as well.
And I think we've done that.
Ah!
One of the great things now is that we're syndicated.
So, we're on all the time.
And old people like us now.
I have an Auntie Philly who's 92.
She loves Family Guy
and she won't let any of her friends in the room when it's on
because old people talk back to the television.
She wants to hear it.
- What? - Huh?
What? Huh?
What? I forget.
I said it before, but we're so thankful to our fans
for bringing the show back from the dead,
that I almost feel like we owe it to them
to give 110% every day to every episode.
I try to interact with the fans as much as I can.
I don't know if you can see right now,
but I'm actually eight months pregnant.
And this is a fan's baby.
You get crazy when you're pregnant.
I feel like if you love me from afar then the least I
can do is love you back.
And if that means carrying your child, so be it.
I love my fans.
Keep digging, you know?
It feels like there's no more stories to tell
and then we dig for a while and something pops up that,
"Oh, we haven't done that."
What's next is, I guess, episode 300.
And I'll have even more gray hair
and bigger circles under my eyes.
I'm here for the early bird special.
A Family Guy movie would be a logical extension.
But, with an animated show, you can do pretty much anything.
There's nothing you can't do.
So what is the reason to make a movie?
Without giving anything away,
I think we've hit on the answer to that.
So when that Family Guy movie does come around,
sufficeth to say,
it will be something that is not do-able on TV.
Sorry. It's been building up for a while.
I don't have a favorite character at this point.
I'm recoding voices so much.
Hiya, pardner. I'm a cattle rustler.
I rustle cattle.
Oh, that's turning out good.
I'm partial to Brian.
Brian. Brian Steele.
Ooh, good heavens!
He's the only character that I don't leave the booth with a sore throat.
Seems to me you should send less time working for the paper
and more time working on that novel you've been working on...
Ah!
== sync, corrected by elderman ==