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Recap / Family Guy S 4 E 27 The Griffin Family History

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Original air date: May 14, 2006

When burglars break into the Griffin house, Stewie, Peter, Lois, and Brian hide out in the panic room, leaving Meg to try and force the burglars to rape her. Meanwhile, Peter passes the time locked in the panic room by telling three stories about his ancestors.

Tropes used in the episode:

  • Anachronism Stew: Lois's full name in the colonial story is Lois Laura Bush Lynne Cheney Pewterschmidt.
  • Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: When Meg is taken captive by the burglars, she is at first scared but then asks them when they're going to have their way with her. The burglars are grossed out and increasingly desperate advances from Meg eventually lead her to being arrested by Joe for sexual harassment.
  • Batter Up!: Peter whacks Meg with a bat after she scares him.
  • Caused the Big Bang: When Peter starts telling the history of his family, he starts at the beginning of the universe, which was the result of one of God's farts that he set on fire.
  • Continuity Nod: One segment cover's Peter's black ancestor Nate from season 3's "Peter Griffin: Husband, Father...Brother?"
  • Diseased Name: During the part of the story that takes place in the age of the dinosaurs, one of them (with Quagmire's voice) is a Herpesaur.
    Herpesaur: Hey, Peter, does your tail itch?
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being a threat to the Griffin family, the burglars have no intention of raping Meg, since you know she’s 17, and are disgusted when she tries to force them to, to the point of filing sexual harassment charges against her.
  • Eye Scream: The punchline in each of the 3 Willie "Black-Eye" Griffin shorts involve him hurting his eye - by stabbing himself while trying to look through a telescope, looking down the barrel of a loaded musket and having it discharge in his face, and having a piano fall on it.
  • Generation Xerox: In Nate Griffin's story, all of the people Nate meets are strikingly similar to Peter's friends, and he even falls in love with a woman who is not only named Lois Pewterschmidt, but looks exactly like her.
  • Heavy Sleeper: In the colonial story, Nate Griffin wants to get Lois's attention, so he throws a horse through her bedroom window. The horse is freaked out and destroys her entire room before bolting. Lois nonchalantly wakes up and asks, "...Is someone there?"
  • Hulk Speak: Used in the caveman segment, exaggerated for comedy.
    Stewie: Damn all. What deuce. Victory, Stewie's.
  • Lady Looks Like a Dude: Played for laughs. When the burglars capture Meg, they hold up a sign to the cameras in the panic room saying We have your son. When Lois informs them Meg's a girl, the burglars are genuinely surprised, with the guy holding the sign writing a new one saying Really?!
  • Laser-Guided Karma: To be perfectly honest, Meg kind of earned her arrest for trying to force a burglar who was clearly not interested in her to make love with her, which is basically considered rape. No wonder the burglars filed sexual harassment charges against her.
  • Love Hungry: Meg when she gets turned down by the burglars for sex.
    Meg: Come on! I'm pretty!
  • Matricide: In the caveman segment, caveman Stewie accomplishes killing his mother caveman Lois.
  • Named After the Injury: Willie "Black Eye" Griffin, a slapstick actor whose movies often involve him injuring his eye in some way.
  • No Ending: It's never resolved what became of Meg being arrested for sexual harassment.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: Nate Griffin opens a DMV in order to inconvenience Caucasians.
  • Parting the Sea: When Moses Griffin leads the Israelites to the Red Sea, they complain about not wanting to swim across it, so Moses has God part the water for them to walk across.
  • Piano Drop: The film "Piano Problems" has Willie "Black-Eye" Griffin and a co-worker hoisting a piano to the top of a building, only for Willie to get distracted by a pie cooling on a nearby windowsill. He lets go of the rope and the piano falls on him.
  • Pun: According to Peter, what created the universe was God and His roommate Chugs arm wrestling, and God's fart causing the Big Bang.
    God: You smell that?
  • Race Lift: Most of the show's normally Caucasian characters are changed to African in the Nate Griffin segment, where they're depicted as African slaves. Cleveland, inversely, is changed into a white slave trader.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: The long scene of Peter getting chewed out by his family for not liking The Godfather as they're all drowning is taken verbatim from an actual conversation Seth MacFarlane had with the rest of the cast. All of the reasons Peter dislikes the movie are reasons MacFarlane dislikes it.
  • Reckless Gun Usage: In "Musket Madness", Black Eye Griffin looks down the barrel of a musket immediately after loading it, and has it discharge in his face.
  • Rule of Three: Three of "Black-Eye" Griffin's silent comedy films are shown, and all three have the same punchline: Peter's eye getting a black circle around it as he shrugs to the audience and "wah wah" music plays.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: Peter admits he doesn't care for The Godfather, causing Lois, Stewie, and Chris to admonish him for it. All while they're on the verge of drowning as the panic room floods, mind you.
  • Sex Sells: Caveman Peter method of getting his wheel sold is to have Lois pose next to it in her underwear.
  • Shout-Out
    • The Griffins escape into a Panic Room when the burglars arrive.
    • The creationism version of the universe's origin is depicted as Jeannie nodding her head to cause animals to instantaneously appear
  • Skewed Priorities: The Griffin's potentially last moments on Earth as the panic room floods ends up getting sidetracked by an argument over the merits of (or, in Peter's view, the lack thereof) of The Godfather.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: In the colonial story, when Nate first sees Lois:
    Peter: As a poet might say, she was the kind of woman you just want to have sex with over and over.
  • Take That!: Peter got the idea to install a panic room in the house after watching the movie Panic Room, and thinking to himself "where could I put myself so that I never have to watch this movie again?"
  • Title Card: Parodied. In the third "Black-Eye" Griffin silent film, Peter says a really long sentence, and the title card merely says "That's pie."
  • Vocal Dissonance: The reason "Black-Eye" Griffin didn't make the transition from silent films to talkies: His speaking voice was grating and awkward, sounding a lot like Bobcat Goldthwait.

 
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Nate Griffin opens a DMV

Nate Griffin manages to get one over on the white men by opening a DMV and forcing them to go on a long-winded slew of paperwork.

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