Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Family Guy/The Simpsons - The Simpsons Guy (Crossover Episode/Spoilers)

I am over the Simpsons.



Well on Sunday night in the US when people weren't watching the worlds of Once Upon A Time and Frozen crossing over, there was also this crossover event to behold - Family Guy met The Simpsons and the results were surprisingly a lot better than I actually expected them to be. And all because Peter wrote a sexist article, which then resulted in the Griffins ending up in Springfield and somewhat bonding with the Simpsons before also falling out with them and then bonding again.


I was surprised with how much I actually enjoyed this crossover episode. I was pretty much dreading it and didn't think the worlds would work so well together but the chemistry with the characters, the series of in-jokes (Brian pointedly telling Stewie that Bart's catchphrase was more iconic than his own made me laugh) and various references from both shows actually worked pretty well. Even Peter and Homer together weren't as grating as I dreaded them to be, though their chicken fight lasted too long (don't those fights always last too long?) and the carwash sequence was nothing short of vomit inducing but other than that, the two of them managed to compliment each other well. There were even the odd time where I didn't find myself wanting to cave Peter's brains in with a blunt object. I still loathe the character though.


Of course, while the Peter/Homer scenes were better than expected (if a tad predictable - of course those two idiots would clash over beer), it was really the Stewie and Bart scenes that were the highlight of the episode. Stewie going to extreme lengths to impress Bart by holding the latter's enemies and tormentors captive only managed to freak the spiky haired lad out and the last scene where Stewie lamented the loss of a potentially destructive friendship was both a little sad and somewhat funny. It seems that even Bart has his limits after 26 seasons of unbridled chaos.


Another highlight from the episode was bonding scenes with Lisa and Meg, only because it gave the latter a moment of self worth, which the show will inevitably forget yet again. Personally after 13 seasons, I'm beyond bored of Meg being terrorised by her family. It's just not funny and if Family Guy ever ends, I want the last episode to result in Meg kicking the living shit out of Peter before killing him off in the worst way possible. At least Lisa was nice to her, if initially a little bitchy though. Of course while the crossover was fun and had a few cameos from other shows and a delightful compare/contrast scene in a courtroom, it did struggle to give Lois/Marge anything meaningful to do and the subplot with Chris, Brian and Santa's Little Helper wasn't that great either. However while the best days are behind both shows, this was a fun meeting of worlds, though not one that would need repeating though. As Peter said, let's keep a half hour distance between both shows.

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