(Should I be specifying the spoiler-alert-ness of these reviews? I'd hardly think it would matter, because Family Guy is less a show than it is random selections from a filthy pop culture-themed jokebook, but, well, erm, just in case....consider yourself warned?)
Ah, weddings. According to the television industry, there's nothing more magical. If your characters get married, that means their relationship has succeeded because, I mean, marriages never go wrong, right? Even if you've been married, say, nine times before, the tenth time's the charm so long as it's on camera, right? What do you mean that isn't right? Are you implying that it's one of the hoariest clichés at work in modern entertainment media? Well, then, surely you'll love the exciting climax of the latest Family Guy episode, I say, with the sarcasm! In all seriousness, though, "Brothers & Sisters" already started off on the wrong foot with me, being about what I tend to think is one of the least interesting things a show can really be about: wedding drama. Despite being major life changes, weddings just don't make for interesting viewing. They just don't. Now, the question is, can a show that has already been lousy viewing with increasingly high frequency already possible mine anything decent out of the topic?
Lois's generic sister Carol, whom you might remember from season three's "Emission Impossible" (but then again you might rightfully not, that was ten years ago), has apparently just suffered the indignity of her ninth divorce. (She has also suffered the indignity of losing her former voice actress, Carol Kane. Instead, she is now portrayed by the Razzie-nominated Julie Haggerty, who doesn't share her first name with the character.) Whilst staying with the Griffins, she quickly stumbles into yet another romance, this time with Mayor Adam West for some reason, who proposes to her after the first date, much to the delight of Peter, who has always wanted a brother. (One presumes he also suffered a recent divorce, from his hand.) But Lois, good sister that she is, correctly realises that this isn't very wise at all, and convinces Carol to call off the impending nuptials. West gets depressed, resigns as mayor, and sets off for Alaska with dreams of "becoming an Eskimo", but at the last moment Lois has an attack of conscience and decides they should totally be together after all. And the episode ends with Mayor Adam West actually getting married, for some reason.
Immediately we notice a few things going against this story, which asks us to become at least passively engaged in a relationship between Adam West, one of the jokiest characters in a series full of jokey characters, and some chick who we've only seen once before and who's really quite boring. (I guess she DID fuck Doggie Daddy, which I guess IS interesting....but that's it.) Does it give Adam West new depth? No - in one scene he's a goofy child as always, during his interactions with future brother-in-law Peter...then suddenly he'll have a serious-ish, romantic moment, with Carol, obviously. But it's nothing deep, nothing interesting, and with the exception of a cute gag involving his "vows", nothing that really feels like something he'd would do. Once again, this season of Family Guy expects us to engage with a storyline, but that storyline is not engaging. Furthermore, it suffers from that offensive logic that getting married right away is the only way one can be happy in a relationship. Couldn't a compromise have been reached by simply taking things more slowly? Not on television it couldn't have. Meanwhile, the bits involving Peter and Adam as brothers actually have a sweet charmingness to them, making far more sense for the characters involved and actually being just a tad relatable. This other storyline had potential, so obviously it's ditched pretty quickly. Because the marriage, it will rule us all.
Perhaps realising that the storyline they chose to run with the most heavily here, with Carol, wasn't really interesting at all, this episode continues the recent trend of relying a bit more heavily on cutaways, after the series spent most of this season trying to get away from them. I've had mixed feelings about this: surely, attempting to let your storyline take centre stage is valiant in its own right, but the Family Guy crew has seemingly proven themselves to not even be as capable as the writers of (literal) sister show American Dad! as far as producing a story-driven episode is concerned. Now, I certainly hope the writers haven't decided that producing episodes with more substance than a string of unconnected jokes is a lost cause, because if they figure out how to do it right, it could be an absolute delight, and really, one of the few things that could push back the show's ever-lingering stagnation. But in this episode, the unrelated gags definitely helped take some of the sting out of a tale of bland romance. This not-terribly-good episode was nonetheless better for their inclusion. However, while we're on this subject, it's pretty much mandatory to mention the AIDS/aides joke. Here's something that the awkward middle-aged quasi-libertarian boys over at South Park not only did over nine years ago, but inexplicably devoted an entire episode to. Does Robert Loggia make this joke new again? No. No he doesn't.
Adam West, the actor, is a delightful fellow who certainly deserves better. He's got one of those fantastic voices that brings a unique touch to even the blandest of dialogue - but that doesn't mean he should be stuck with bland dialogue. The fact that this episode, unusually for the series, reaches a conclusion that ISN'T deus-ex-machinaed out of existence at the last minute - something that, by all means, SHOULD leave at least a minor impression - fails to do so. Will this exercise in pointlessness make itself worthwhile down the road as an excuse to give Adam West more screentime with the family? I guess anything's possible, and theoretically that might make up for the way the Peter/Adam brother-in-law storyline got completely shafted in this episode. But until then, we'll still be left wondering why we were made to spend half an hour watching the wacky mayor marry a boring one-off character from ten years ago. Because I still just don't know why.
No comments:
Post a Comment