Stewie reunites with his child acting partner Olivia Fuller, whose fame is on the wane after being replaced with Chuck Berry in a fruit juice campaign, and the two get "married". Meanwhile, Peter gets into chick flicks and decides to make one himself, despite not being experienced in film making.
This episode contains examples of the following:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: After witnessing Quagmire's mean treatment of a woman he had over for sex, and taking Brian's earlier "to be taken in jest" advice to heart, Stewie is led to believe that Olivia will like him better if he treated her cruelly and took on a James Dean attitude and look. Which (incredibly enough) happens.
- Amateur Film-Making Plot: The B-plot in this episode revolves around Peter trying to make a Chick Flick with his friends.
- Awful Wedded Life: Parodied with Stewie and Olivia. After their mock wedding, they're constantly sniping at each other and extremely unhappy and bitter.
- Bowdlerization: On the TV version (both on cable and network TV) and Netflix version of the episode, Vageena Hurtz died of an "angry hymen". In the DVD version, she died from a "rotten vagina".
- Death of a Child: Implied to have happened in the final scene, where Stewie traps Olivia and another toddler, Victor, inside a cardboard house he sets on fire, as neither are seen escaping. Though Olivia is seen alive and well in her next appearance seasons later.
- Epic Fail: Combined with Movie-Making Mess, Peter's "attempt" to create a Chick Flick by himself. The end result is a horribly produced and directed, randomly cobbled-together film that uses incomprehensible plot bits into a nondescript story that offends everyone who sees it. Just ask Joe, who levels off an adlibbed zinger.Joe: (after watching the "chick flick") My ass is actually sore. MY ass is actually sore.
- Evil Laughter: Stewie does this as he walks away – calmly – from the burning house, while two toddlers are trapped inside and about to be burned to death.
- Foul Ball Pit: Stewie mentions that a four-year-old died in a ball pit.
- Freudian Slip:Stewie: I mean, what kind of man would I be if I ran off now?
Brian: Well, you'd be a black man.
Stewie: (offended) Wow! WOW! Whoa, what was that?!
Brian: Ah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. That was my father talking.
Stewie: You, uh, gotta work on that, man. Bad dog. - House Fire: Stewie sets fire to the cardboard box that he and Olivia "shared" … while Olivia and Victor are trapped inside, screaming for their lives. There is no indication either one escaped, though Olivia returned in "The Boys in the Band", meaning that she survived.
- Ironic Echo: Victor's running gag of saying "Idea for a (something)", gets used by Stewie as revenge while trapping Olivia and Victor in the cardboard house which he sets fire to.Stewie: Idea for a farce: Cheating wife and pompous ass burned alive!
- Is It Something You Eat?: Stewie guesses that sex is a kind of cake.
- Just a Flesh Wound: In a cutaway gag, a drugged-up Cheeto cheetah gets high from snorting Cheeto dust and smashes his hand through the glass table. He reacts indifferently feeling no pain from the shards of glass in his paw.Cheeto Cheetah: (beat) It ain't easy being cheesy.
- Ping Pong Naïveté: Stewie laments being trapped in a Sexless Marriage. Olivia then asks him if he even knows what sex is.Stewie: That's not the point, don't change the... it's a kind of cake.
- Shout-Out:
- Several of Woody Allen's films are referenced, including Annie Hall, Manhattan and Crimes and Misdemeanors. The latter is the inspiration for the character Victor, who becomes Olivia's new "boyfriend."
- Steel Magnolias: Peter's film "Steel Vaginas" takes its name from the 1987 theatrical production and subsequent 1989 movie starring Bette Midler.
- Time-Life Music, specifically the "Sounds Of the Eighties" series (of 1980s music, only here it is "Sitcom Punchlines of the '80s" and the bonus disc "Sounds of the '80s: Studio Audience").
- Brian telling Stewie "It's not your fault".
- Studio Audience: Parodied with the blackout gag for "Sitcom Punchlines of the '80s" and "Sounds of the '80s: Studio Audience," which was simply clichéd canned studio responses on a series of albums. The host was "The Mayor of Comedy," and features a "celebrity endorsement" from Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati, One Day at a Time and Head of the Class). The advertisement is a parody of Time-Life commercials for various popular music compilation albums.
- Stylistic Suck: Steel Vaginas is such a woefully inept film, it seems like an insult to woefully inept films everywhere. Case in point, Peter was insistent that Joe's character in the movie could walk. Since that's not actually possible, Peter inserted a cheap computer effect over Joe's wheelchair to make it look like he was running.
- Trivially Obvious: The Parody Commercial for Tasty Juice ends with this line:"Tasty Juice: Drink it, then convert it to pee!"
