Brian and Stewie discover that Carter's pharmaceutical company has the cure for cancer and has been withholding it from the public to reap the profits from medical treatments.
Tropes:
- Acquainted with Emergency Services: Joe Swanson has been to the hospital so many times that he knows all the staff by name.
- Artistic License – Medicine: Cancer isn't a single disease with a single, simple cause such as a bacterium or virus. Rather, it's an umbrella term for a variety of disorders, with complex and multiple causes relating to cell failure, so a cure-all for cancer as a whole like Carter seems to have isn't medically possible.
- Berserk Button: Stewie really doesn't like being called "Stu", and he flips out at Brian for calling him it.
- Black Comedy Rape: Stewie mentions that he's learning Spanish by spying on Carter having sex with his maid. He notes that the Spanish word "no" must mean something different than it does in English. It does not.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Carter, to the point of refusing to release the cure for cancer he found, just so he can profit from treating people with cancer instead of curing it.
- Dodgy Toupee: Quagmire is revealed to have one in this episode. It gets knocked off during a baseball game, resulting in him being a laughing stock.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first part of the episode is about Quagmire embracing baldness after his Dodgy Toupee gets knocked off during a baseball game. He begins acting like an old man, which irritates his friends, who encourage him to get a hair transplant so they can have the old Quagmire back. While the Griffins visit him in the hospital, Brian discovers that Carter has advanced cancer and has only a couple of weeks to live, leading to the plot about him hiding the cure for cancer that lasts for the rest of the episode.
- Hate Sink: Carter fully cements himself as one in this episode. His industry discovered the cure for cancer in 1999 and has been keeping it from the public ever since, using the excuse that they get more money treating cancer patients for a lifetime than if they cure them in a day. When Brian reveals the secret to the Griffin family and Lois makes her father promise to publicize the cure, he lies about it. Lois immediately calls him demanding an explanation, at which point he flat-out admits to lying before abruptly hanging up on her.
- Hates Being Nicknamed: Stewie doesn't take kindly to Brian calling him Stu.
- I Lied: Carter's response when Lois questions him about not releasing the cancer cure like he promised her.
- It's All About Me: Brian shows a complete lack of concern for Lois by immediately excusing himself from a distraught Lois to go a movie after telling her that Carter is dying.
- Karma Houdini: Carter receives no comeuppance for deceiving his daughter about releasing his cure for cancer.
- Social Media Is Bad: After Quagmire loses his toupee at the baseball stadium, the video is uploaded on the Internet. The news report afterwards mentions that "Comments ranged from sympathy to racial slurs directed at others who chose to comment" (the latter is unfortunately Truth in Television).
- Withholding the Cure: It turns out Carter's research team has discovered the cure for cancer, but is holding it in secret to both save his own ass from it and keep people buying expensive treatments for it.
- With Catlike Tread: Parodied. Stewie's solution to breaking into a locked door is to smash through it with a fire extinguisher, and the way he regains his and Brian's stealth status is to proclaim that nothing is happening to a questioning guard.
- You Know What You Did: Stewie says this when Brian calls him 'Stu'.
