Family Guy Review: "Trading Places"

In a season whose running theme seems to be hoary old clichés (and whorey old clichés, this show loves its sex jokes, but that's beside the point for the moment), it should come as no surprise that last Sunday Family Guy produced an episode centred on one of the hoariest old clichés of all: having the kids trade places with the adults because, oh my god, it's always so much easier to be part of the opposite group you're in now, isn't it? Now, as super-clichés go, this is one that remains more potentially amusing than most, so I suppose there was some small sliver of hope to be had going into this, I say, in an attempt at fake optimism, so as to appear unbiased.

We open on yet another cliché - one of those contests wherein whoever keeps their hand on a car for the longest wins. Except here it's not a car - it's a crummy dirt bike, which forms the basis for yet another first act about Peter forming an arbitrary obsession with some boring object. They're inseparable! That is, until Chris and Meg crash it. In order to teach the kids a lesson, Peter and Lois, excellent parents that they are, that the only logical course of action is to switch place. Chris is the breadwinner! Meg is the homemaker! Peter and Lois are actually permitted to attend the kids' schools, for some queer reason! Oh, the wackiness! But then the plan goes off the rails when Chris is actually better than Peter at his vague, non-specific job at the brewery. Would they even let a thirteen-year-old work at a brewery? Ah, well, no matter.

The first act was, to be frank, awful. In earlier seasons of this series, the writers liked writing extended jokes that started out funny, then became annoying, then went on so long that they became funny again. Recently, and especially in this season, they've changed things up, by writing lots of extended "jokes" that start out mildly amusing, then become annoying, then remain annoying because it's so mundane and lazy. Basically, they've lost track of the all-important line between funny-boring and tedious-boring. In "German Guy", this manifested in a four-minute geriatric "fight scene" that killed what was left of that episode's comic flow by that point. In this episode, it's nearly two minutes of soulless CGI of Carter ineptly operating a steamshovel. I don't mean "ineptly" in the comedy sense, because it's realistic and straightforward in the most uninspiredly bland way possible. There's nothing clever about this, as nothing actually happens. There aren't any laughs and it's not leading up to anything. It's just....there. Compared to this, a lame "gag" involving Peter performing the National Anthem by revving the dirt bike's motor seems like fucking GOLD.

Things pick up somewhat in the second act, once the titular "trading places" plot kicks in, however. Considering Family Guy's admittedly very low standards for character development, period, the fact that there's even a sliver of an emotional core in this tale is impressive enough, I suppose. Throwaway jokes in unrelated plotlines are one thing, but when characters like Chris and Meg are actually significant parts of an episode's storyline, it certainly helps when they're occasionally more than a generic moron/punching bag. It's not much, but it helped a story that wasn't much on big laughs become a relatively pleasant viewing experience. And, narrowed down to just one cutaway again (I think, correct me if I'm wrong), at the very least they went with one that felt worth the weekly diversion this time, mostly because of the cute callback to it later. Senseless nitpick: In the world of animated sitcoms it's pretty much generally accepted that a major character with a stable job, if fired, will regain that job by the end of the episode thus restoring the status quo, so it really shouldn't bother me at all by this point, but it just seems particularly nonsensical in this episode. If Chris of all people can outperform Peter, then you have to believe that there would be a lot of people who could outperform him. Why not look for one of them instead of simply rehiring your old, inferior worker? Well, I guess that's why they didn't spend much time lingering on the subject of his rehiring! :)

Of the numerous episodes thus far in the ninth season centring on assorted sitcom clichés, "Trading Places" is probably the most successful. Obviously this still isn't saying much, but at the very least, after a dreadful first act, I found myself feeling reasonably contented with the latter two. Even this semi-success doesn't leave me looking forward to whichever unoriginal plot idea they'll choose to roll out next time - it really would be in the writers' best interest to have an idea that's at least sort of their own eventually, y'know?