Peter's Got Woods
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"Peter's Got Woods" is the eleventh episode from the fourth season of the FOX animated series Family Guy. This episode featured guest stars Gabrielle Union as Shauna and James Woods as himself. This is the second Family Guy episode to be rated TV-PG.[1] On Adult Swim, the official rating is TV-PG for suggestive dialogue (D) and offensive language (L).
It was initially scheduled for September 18, 2005 but was aired a week earlier due to FOX delaying the broadcast of the episode "Perfect Castaway" over sensitivity for Hurricane Katrina victims, as the episode made many jokes about tropical storms.[2]
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[edit] Plot summary
Lois asks Peter to go the PTA meeting, then Peter asks Brian to go. Brian reluctantly goes, and falls in love with one of Meg's teachers, Shauna Parks. They go out on a date, and Brian suggests changing the name of James Woods Regional High School. Shauna, who is black, likes Brian's idea of honoring Martin Luther King Jr., and the board holds a meeting to consider the name change. Peter gets James Woods to come to the meeting, who says it's OK to change the name of the school. Impressed by Woods' humility, the board decides not to change the school's name. Brian is furious with Peter's involvement with his and Shauna's idea, although Peter thought that Dr. King was "that guy from Space: 1999", Martin Landau.
Peter and Woods become very good friends, while Brian is late for his date with Shauna. She is upset that he still talks to Peter and makes Brian choose between her and Peter, and they eventually call off their relationship, as Brian feels that his friendship is more important. He and Peter patch their differences at The Drunken Clam. Returning home, they find Woods is still there. They get rid of him by trapping him in a box, with Reese's Pieces as bait (à la E.T.). Woods is then sent to be studied by "top men", when he is really being stored away in a Government Warehouse with similar other crates (à la Raiders of the Lost Ark).
[edit] Notes
On the commentary for this episode, Seth MacFarlane mentioned that he'd like to do a sequel to this episode where James Woods would attempt to get revenge on Peter for being locked in the warehouse. He was able to do so with the episode "Back to the Woods" which goes just as planned resulting in Peter plotting to ruin the actor's career as a payback.
This episode aired in the U.L on September 16, 2005 and garnered 4.54 million viewers.[citation needed]
[edit] Censorship
A sub-plot is cut out of this episode in which Stewie's sleep cycle is disturbed after staying up all night to read The DaVinci Code. He proceeds to become a night owl, going out at night and reciting poetry in a coffee house. In the finished episode, the fact that Stewie goes out to eat with Brian, and his association with some prostitutes in this scene, is a vestigial reference to this.
[edit] Cultural references
- A cutaway, explaining why Brian owes Peter a favor, shows Peter serving as the chorus while Brian sang "Sighing Softly to the River" from Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
- A cutaway shows Stewie playing a game of Marco Polo with deafblind author and activist Helen Keller.
- Stewie reads The Da Vinci Code, influenced by the fact that Lois liked the book.
- At the campout, Peter mashes together the urban legends "The Vanishing Hitchhiker", "The Bloody Hook", and "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs".
- Peter and James Woods sing to the tune of "You Two" from the 1968 musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
- James Woods shows Peter Videodrome, a 1983 cult film, in which Woods starred.
- Peter says to Brian they need to come up with a crazy plan like the kids on That ’70s Show. The show then goes into a segue of Peter and Brian floating in front of a tie dye background to rock music, a common segue on That ’70s Show. Also, Mila Kunis, who voices Meg, starred in That ’70s Show and Seth Green, who voices Chris, was a semi-recurring character on the show.
- One cutaway parodies Star Trek: The Next Generation and shows Captain Picard and Commander Riker joking about Lieutenant Commander Worf's forehead. Actors Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn reprise their Star Trek roles. Picard tells Riker that "Commander Worf's head looks like a fanny." As Worf is annoyed at being mocked, Picard tells him to "Get a sense of humor, Rocky Dennis!" in reference to the movie Mask, starring Cher, about the disfigured titular character Rocky Dennis. The character Captain Picard looks very similar to the character Avery Bullock from American Dad! (whom Patrick Stewart actually voices), the animated series also created by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. An alternate version of this scene shows Counselor Troi (voiced by Marina Sirtis) picking up on Picard's apparent desire to give her a "golden shower." In this parody, the Conn and Ops stations are switched, with Data positioned on the right instead of the left, and vice versa for Wesley Crusher. Seth MacFarlane is a huge fan of Star Trek, claims The Next Generation as his favorite Star Trek series, and later guest starred on two episodes of Enterprise.
- The dialog and the setting near the end of the episode, in which James Woods welcomes Peter, offers him some "cold roast beef" and then quickly switches between anger and regret, is lifted from Roman Polanski's film Death and the Maiden, which is based on a play of the same name by Ariel Dorfman.
- The end of the episode is a reference to both the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (the line "Top men" and the warehouse)[3] and E.T. (using the same type of candy to lure Woods out of hiding so he can go home).
- Peter hangs out with Barney Rubble from the cartoon series The Flintstones. Parodying the series’ use of animals for modern day technological inventions, a pelican serves as Barney's toilet. (In the TV special A Flintstone Family Christmas, the Flintstones were shown to have an actual toilet.) The pelican says to the audience "And you think you have a crap job." And then canned laughter, parodying the use of canned laughter on The Flintstones, ensues...
- When Shauna, Brian's love interest, introduces herself, there's heavenly singing of the name "Shauna" in the background. This parodies a scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Jennifer Grey's character tells Charlie Sheen's character, also the film Sixteen Candles when Anthony Michael Hall's character and Molly Ringwald's character wake up in the car and realize they had sex. "It's Jean, but most guys call me Shauna." This could also be a reference to the 1993 film A Bronx Tale where street gospel style music is played during the meeting of an interracial couple.
- Ronald Reagan, during his retirement, is shown pounding a McDonald's wall and yelling "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!", referencing Reagan's famous 1987 speech in West Berlin and his suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This episode was produced prior to Reagan's death in June 2004.
- Brian's general discomfort and over compensation when talking to Shauna about race could be seen as a continuation of his underlying racism displayed in "Don't Make Me Over,".
- When Peter confuses Martin Luther King, Jr. with a number of people, he mentions "that guy in Platoon," and Brian guesses that he means Charlie Sheen or Willem Dafoe. Peter says "No, his name is Tom Berenger; we were looking for Tom Berenger," mimicking the style of "Hollywood Squares" (which was hosted for some time by name-soundalike Tom Bergeron).
[edit] References
- ^ FOX Fall Schedule
- ^ Fox Holds Family Guy With Hurricane References - 9/8/2005 3:54:00 PM - Broadcasting & Cable
- ^ Family Guy. TheRaider.net. Retrieved on 2008-01-17.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by “Model Misbehavior” |
Family Guy Episodes | Followed by “Perfect Castaway” |
