Original air date: 9/5/2001
Production code: 3ACX-04
A Dinner with the Boss plot ends with Peter's boss, Mr. Weed, choking on a dinner roll and dying before Peter is offered a promotion. What's worse, Peter ends up out of a job when Mr. Weed's video will includes a request to shut down Happy-Go-Lucky Toys and replace it with a pharmaceutical company. After many replacement jobs prove useless (and, in the case of the prostitute job, illegal), Peter decides to live out his dream of being a Renaissance Fair knight.
This episode contains examples of:
- Adam Westing: The late R. Lee Ermey plays the jousting instructor, spoofing his Gunnery Sergeant Hartman role.
- Bait-and-Switch: During a break between jousting the Black Knight approaches someone and asks "What's your fat ass doing here?". You might think he's talking to Peter but in fact he's talking to Bruce, the troubadour, who's on top of a particularly bloated donkey.
- Broken Pedestal: The Black Knight to Peter. During Peter's youth, he falls under the influence of LSD and falls off a tower and is saved by the Black Knight, and the moment inspired him to become a knight like him ever since. Years later, when the Black Knight notices his girlfriend flirting with Peter, he develops an immediate dislike on Peter under the wrong idea that he was harassing her and threatens to kill him if he ever sees him in the fair again, bullying him into quitting. He doesn't even let him be a spectator.
- Comically Missing the Point: Peter's reaction to the Black Knight's girlfriend flirting with him, mostly due to her Flowery Elizabethan English. He somehow parses "Wouldst thou take a gander underneath my frock?" as asking her to "put a bird in her panties".
- Dice Roll Death: Mr. Weed, who is unlucky enough to catch the bread roll expelled from Brian's throat in his throat and immediately chokes to death.
- Ear Ache: During Peter's phase of wielding his lance at all times, he accidentally snags onto Meg's earring. Naturally, he doesn't hear her screaming.
- Hate Sink: The Black Knight, who inspired Peter into getting into jousting only to bully him into quitting years later, all because he thought he was flirting with his girlfriend and didn't listen to him when the latter told him otherwise (though that might only piss him off more).
- Hope Spot: Peter's attempt at impressing Mr. Weed and getting a better position at the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy factory almost works, and Mr. Weed's last words are promoting Peter to Head of Toy Development before he suddenly dies in a freak choking accident. Then after his funeral, the factory is torn down, rendering Peter's endeavors pointless and leaving him unemployed.
- Jerkass: The Black Knight is an obnoxious jerk who blames Peter for his girlfriend flirting with him.
- Jerk Jock: Since jousting is the medieval equivalent of American football, and the Black Knight being the top jouster in the whole fair, his behavior is very much what you'd expect from a stereotypical high school football team captain.
- Killed Off for Real: Mr. Weed, who suddenly chokes to death on a dinner roll during dinner at the Griffin house.
- Left Hanging: Lampshaded when the end of the episode comes and Peter still doesn't have a replacement job.Lois: It'll be OK, Chris. Remember that episode of The Honeymooners when Ralph lost his job but didn't get it back?
Peter: Yeah, why was that? That bugged the crap out of me. - Male Gaze: The Black Knight has a really attractive girlfriend and we're given a few close-ups of her cleavage.
- Noodle Incident: Mort developed a fear of swords after a man in a pirate suit stabbed him in the ear when he was five... and again when he was thirty.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Mr. Weed dies and the toy factory is destroyed, costing Peter his job forever.
- Not So Above It All: One joke has Peter and Lois share a laugh over a bit of juvenile humor after Lois accidentally says "big meet/meat". According to the DVD commentary, this dynamic was formed to help give the two some common interest in response to many fans questioning why the two are even together.
- The Oldest Profession: One of Peter's stints after unemployment is as a Streetwalker. A FEMALE streetwalker, complete with the outfit. Lois pulls him out of it out of embarassment.
- Raging Stiffie: Upon seeing the Black Knight's beautiful girlfriend, Peter and the rest of the knights make their approval heard by their erect penises hitting their armor one-by-one and making a loud "Ding!" Mort, meanwhile, just looks around awkwardly and says "Ding!"
- Renaissance Fair: The last 3rd of the episode predominantly takes place at one.
- Shout-Out:
- The Electric Company: One of Peter's short-lived jobs is as a cast member of the 1970s PBS series, losing his job after assaulting a cast member after an ill-fated taping of a "soft-shoe silhoutte" segment (where two people sound out short words using a common sound cluster).
- Spanner in the Works: Peter only won against the Black Knight because Tom reported his car was being towed (and viewers see it was Mort doing it as payback for the humiliation).
- Special Guest: Will Ferrell as The Black Knight
- Status Quo Is God: Subverted and lampshaded. By the end of the episode, Peter leaves the knight business but has no alternative job to fall back on.
- The Unreveal: We never see the Black Knight's face. In fact, at one point he shaves the jawline of his helmet and somehow gives himself a cut.
- Wham Episode: Mr. Weed suddenly dies, and the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy factory that was Peter's job for the last few seasons is torn down, with this episode marking Peter's first foray into a new profession.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we see of the Black Knight is him getting defeated by Peter in a jousting match. You'd think he'd go up to him and demand a rematch because he won out of dumb luck (technically, he did) but for some reason he never did. Of course, he might have been knocked out when Peter hit him.
