Family Guy Season 24 Episode 3 Review: A Common Annoyance

Critic’s Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

3.5

Much of Family Guy Season 24 Episode 3 focuses on Peter on Fire Island, and that appears to be the main storyline.

However, it’s the secondary arc that stands out, as it’s something that we can all likely relate to.

Once again, we’re reminded of why being evergreen has been so great for this animated comedy for so long, and why it still works.

When a Trend Becomes a Personality

There are always new trends, and there’s nothing wrong with that — that is, until a trend becomes a person’s personality.

We’ve all been around those types of people, and maybe at some point, we’ve become those types of people.

It’s easy to get trapped in the love of something, and it’s something that Family Guy Season 24 Episode 3 brings up.

As Stewie learns about memes for the first time, he becomes obsessed, even talking like one.

As a one-off, it’s fun, but with the way Stewie makes it part of his personality, it starts to grate.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that Brian is getting annoyed.

However, I will say Brian’s immediate annoyance with memes is a bit heavy-handed. Again, there is some fun in memes.

It does remind us of levels of creativity, though. 

Making a meme is nothing like creating real art or real content, and Brian has a right to get annoyed by it.

Stewie tries to point out that Brian is doing the same with this Barbie 3 script, which is poking fun at writing fanfiction.

I will say that writing fanfiction often brings some creativity, knowing that it allows people to create the basis of the story without having to develop the characters too much, and then they can add their own characters to the story already formed.

I’m going off track, though.

Family Guy Season 24 Episode 3 keeps the theme of creativity and making an internet trend a personality running with Stewie’s arc.

It even bleeds into Peter’s arc, as he overhears everything going on while Peter is at Fire Island — and I think everyone can relate to Stewie, as nobody wants to even imagine their parents in that sort of situation, let alone hear it!

At the end of the episode, there is hope that Stewie has gotten it all out of his system, but he’s done the thing everyone eventually learns how to do.

He realizes he doesn’t need to talk about memes with Brian; he can just share them with those who will find them funny.

Of course, there’s a sad element to this, as it means he can’t share something he loves with the people around him, but then not everyone has to see all sides of our personalities.

This is why I’ve always said that only we really know ourselves in full detail, because we’ll always show a different side of ourselves to others.

Our parents see a different side of us than our partners or friends do, and our children see a vastly different side of all of them.

I enjoyed Chris’s inclusion in Family Guy Season 24 Episode 3, as he starts out loyal to Stewie and then switches to Brian.

It’s another chance to poke fun at the things going on in the world, and in this case, it’s Gen Z.

I did have to take a bit of a moment to really think about this, since Family Guy has been on for 27 years now. Chris wasn’t Gen Z when this show started, and it’s the beauty of resetting the comedy.

However, this moment does not make it evergreen, as the mere mention of Gen Z dates it slightly, given the current internet trend of lumping everyone into a generation.

While memes do that as well, it’s not on the scale of generational connections.

After all, memes have been around since social media became a big thing, but it’s only been in the last 10 years or so that there’s been so much focus on the different generations — at least, in the way there is now.

Who’s to say that this will continue like this in another 10 years? What will that trend be?

And yes, I fully see Family Guy still going in another 10 years!

Peter Gets a Taste of Life with Just Men

The main arc of Family Guy Season 23 Episode 3 is Peter, Joe, Quagmire, and Carlton heading to Fire Island.

That isn’t the original destination, but because Peter wishes for a place of just men, he is granted that wish.

Of course, Lois knows exactly what the island is all about when she finally finds out where Peter is, but Peter doesn’t really care.

It builds on much of what Peter has done in the past.

He once lived with the gay community.

Do we not remember the episode when he lived with a man?

I was surprised that this didn’t come up during the episode, even with a mention of it. This would have been a great time for a quick callback.

Although I guess the callback is subtle when it comes to Peter trying to pay off the debt for himself and his friends, as there has been a long-running joke about his bisexuality and his shame of being bisexual.

What I didn’t understand is if Peter did that to clear the debt, why were all the men after him and his friends as they skated to the ferry? I feel like something was missing there.

I do fear that this will become one of the more forgettable episodes of this season.

While Bowen Yang’s song may save it just a little, overall, the episode is easy to tune out.

There were elements of it that I just felt like had been done before, especially with being washed up on a beach.

As Peter got back, though, I realized that the entire episode reminds me of why Lois is a much stronger woman than either Alex Borstein or I am. There is not a chance in hell that either of us would have put up with Peter!

I’ll also say that while there is beauty in being surrounded by people like you, there is also beauty in differences and in understanding them.

Man or woman, the world needs all of us, and we need to learn how to live in harmony.

I’ll say now that this is the weakest episode of Family Guy Season 24 so far, but we’re just three episodes in. There is plenty of fun to be had.

Family Guy airs on Sundays at 8/7c and then at 9:30/8:30c on FOX, and I’ll be here to review both episodes each week.

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