Recap / Family Guy S 2 E 20 Wasted Talent

Original air date: 7/26/2000

Production code: 2ACX-15

After Peter wins a chance to visit the Pawtucket Brewery (and gets banned for trying an experimental beer), he gets drunker than usual, which turns him into a piano virtuoso (or, as Lois says, "You're like that idiot from Shine!"), and Lois does whatever she can to get her husband as wasted as possible in time for a piano competition.

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This episode contains examples of:

• Ambiguous Syntax:
  Lois: Oh, my God. You can only play the piano when you're drunk!
  Peter: That's not true. I can also vomit, fall down and make dirty calls to your sister when I'm drunk.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Peter says he believes silver must leave a weird taste, it sounds similar to the movie scene where, after a failure to find a golden ticket, Charlie says gold must have a weird taste. Then it turns out Peter did find a silver scroll.
• Beer Goggles: Tom Tucker drinks on the air because he wants to find the Pawtucket Brewery scroll; Diane Simmons gives him a face and Tom says, "Hey, don't complain; this is actually making you look attractive."
  • Also Stewie waking up next to an ugly baby in a cutaway and moaning, "Please tell me we didn't do it."
• Brick Joke: After it's revealed that Peter can play the piano while drunk, Stewie asks him to play the sad music from The Incredible Hulk (1977) while he backs up with his thumb stuck out like a hitchhiker. At the end of the episode, at the start of the credits, Stewie is seen walking backwards on a road with his thumb out while the sad music plays again
  • When Peter gets kicked out of the Brewery and demands a Chumba Wumba song, they simply kick him in the knee, prompting him to repeat his pained hissing noises from the earlier Overly Long Gag described below.
• Can't Use Stairs: Joe is unable to take the tour of Pawtucket Pat's factory because there's no wheelchair ramp.
  Joe: I'm glad I'm not takin' your stupid tour! I'm a Coors man anyway! Silver bullet!
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: The first half. Peter drinks even more Pawtucket Patriot beer than usual attempting to find a hidden silver scroll and win a tour of the brewery (many others die of alcohol poisoning trying to win the contest). On the big day, Joe is kicked out by the Chumba Wumbas before the tour begins since the brewery does not have wheelchair ramps; later Peter and Brian get kicked out when they steal beer designed not to go flat and wind up having to fart (rather than burp) to escape doom...though Peter requests one more Chumba Wumba song before he goes. Notably, this spoof has direct parodies of songs from the 1971 film, rather than suspiciously similar-sounding pastiches. As the Chumba Wumbas see Joe off:
  Chumba Wumba #1: What do you do when you're stuck in a chair?
  Chumba Wumba #2: Finding it hard to go up and down stairs?
  Chumba Wumba #3: What do you think of the one you call God?
  Chumba Wumba Chorus: Isn't His absence slight-ly odd?
  Chumba Wumba #4: Maybe He's forgotten you.
• Composite Character: Tom Tucker is one of the journalists covering the Golden Ticket search, in addition to being the ticket forger.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Stewie beats up one of Lois's piano students while she's getting some sheet music. When she returns to find his bruised face, she asks what happened and the student, intimidated by Stewie, says "I fell."
• Disability Superpower: Peter is a brilliant piano player, but only while completely drunk.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Viewers who know the Pawtucket Brewery from later episodes would most likely be shocked by its initial portrayal as a whimsical stand-in for Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. A Handwave explains it away.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The first half is a Whole-Plot Reference to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, but after Peter breaks the brewery's rules, the episode focuses more on the whole piano contest plot.
• Jerkass: The Pawtucket Brewery isn't wheelchair accessible, but Pawtucket Pat doesn't care enough about that to accommodate Joe.
• Living Prop: The four winners of the silver scrolls are Joe, Peter, a professional ninja named Jerry Nelson, and... an old man and boy who resemble Charlie and Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, but otherwise receive no focus or speaking lines.
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Peter accuses Lois of being bad in bed one night, only for her to tell him she wasn't even home that night, revealing he just humped a pillow and didn't even notice it.
• Mood Whiplash: Of the comedic variety. The joyous "I've Got a Golden Ticket" instrumental when Peter runs home is cut short when he trips and hurts his knee.
• Never My Fault: After getting kicked off the brewery tour for going into an unauthorized room (that he was specifically told not to go in), Peter drunkenly badmouths Pawtucket Pat to Lois, despite having no-one to blame but himself for getting kicked out.
• Obscene OB-GYN: Lois goes in for a standard check-up, only to find her piano rival Alexis also being examined. Just before the check-up finishes, Alexis' gynecologist does something to her that makes her shout "Fred, this is not a date!"
• Overly Long Gag: Peter hurting his knee was one of the first times the show indulged in this, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
• Parodies for Dummies: At the beginning of the episode, Meg reads Popularity for Dummies.
• Pun-Based Title: The episode is titled "Wasted Talent", with "wasted" being meant in the sense of "inebriated" and referring to how the episode's plot involves Peter becoming a skilled pianist while drunk.
• Roadside Wave: In the cutaway introducing Lois's rival Alexis Radcliffe, the latter pulls a bucket of water out of her car and pours it on the road specifically so she can do this to Lois and her student.
• Shout-Out:
  • Among the songs Peter plays while drunk are the theme song from The X-Files and sad music from The Incredible Hulk (1977).
    • When Lois and Peter first discover his talent, one of the songs he plays is "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton.
  • The ending of the episode is a parody of the Cruel Twist Ending of the infamous The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "Time Enough At Last".
  • Peter wins the competition by playing the theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. When it's over, a woman resembling Mary throws her hat into the air and both freeze in place, much to the confusion of people around her.
  • The Oompa Loompa expies are called Chumba Wumbas. Chumbawamba was a music group whose biggest hit, "Tubthumping," was a song about drinking.
• Song Parody: "Pure Inebriation" is a parody of "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
• Sore Loser: When the last scroll is supposedly found:
  Tom Tucker: I think I speak for everyone when I say, congratulations, you son of a bitch.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Tom Tucker puts a carnivorous earwig into his ear as self-inflicted punishment for faking that the last scroll was found:
  Tom Tucker: (on the floor in pain) IT'S EATING OUT THE BACK OF MY EYES!!!
  Diane Simmons: (to camera) In other news, chocolate may be better for you than once thought. In a recent twelve-week study...
• Was It Really Worth It?: At the end, after winning the competition, Lois has this reaction, knowing that she most likely damaged Peter's health by killing countless brain cells and keeping him in a state of constant drunkenness to assure her victory.
• X-Ray of Pain: We get a view of Peter's last living brain cell acting out the ending to "Time Enough at Last".

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