Wasted Talent

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“Wasted Talent”
Family Guy episode
Lois discovers Peter's "muse."
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 20
Written by	Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman (teleplay) Dave Collard and Ken Goin (story)
Directed by	Bert Ring
Guest stars	Michael McKean, Adam Carolla
Production no.	2ACX15
Original airdate	July 25, 2000
Season 2 episodes
Family Guy - Season 2 September 23, 1999 – August 1, 2000
Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater Holy Crap Da Boom Brian in Love Love Thy Trophy Death Is a Bitch The King Is Dead I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin' Running Mates A Picture Is Worth a 1,000 Bucks Fifteen Minutes of Shame Road to Rhode Island Let's Go to the Hop Dammit Janet! There's Something About Paulie He's Too Sexy for His Fat E. Peterbus Unum The Story on Page One Wasted Talent Fore Father

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List of Family Guy episodes

"Wasted Talent" is an episode, from the second season of the FOX animated series Family Guy, guest starring Adam Carolla as Death. It is the 27th episode of Family Guy. The episode's title refers to the phrase "wasted talent", in which someone with a special gift throws it away and does not utilize it in any way. However, in this episode, "wasted" is used in the sense of "extremely drunk."

[edit] Plot summary

Lois desperately searches for one piano student who can beat her rival Alexis's student at the piano competition.

Meanwhile, in a parody of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Peter drinks even more Pawtucket Patriot beer than usual in an attempt to find a hidden silver scroll and win a tour of the brewery. The next day, Joe was heard screaming due to the fact he found the silver scrol first. The same day, Death came to take three teenagers who drank to many. He then drank one and is afraid of being pulled over. But the instant he drove of he bumped on a side of a police car. Almost ready to give up, he drinks one more beer, which turns out to have the silver scroll. Peter and Brian go to the brewery tour. Pawtucket Pat (Michael McKean) is seemingly killed on his front walkway, but the killer turns out to be Cheech Marin, hired to pull off a gag. Joe is kicked out before the tour begins, since the brewery is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and does not have wheelchair ramps. During the tour Peter and Brian split off from the group to try beer that never goes flat, in spite of Pat's warning that they haven't worked out all the kinks. When Pat finds Peter and Brian in the forbidden room, he ejects them from the brewery.

Angry at Pawtucket Pat, Peter tries to get Lois's attention by playing the piano, showing that he can play piano perfectly when drunk. Lois decides to enter Peter as her student in the piano competition, and keeps him in a state of constant inebriation. Peter's piano repertoire is movie and TV show theme songs, including Dallas, Nine to Five, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Files and The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

At the competition, Peter can't even find the piano. Lois has to turn him around to face the piano, then move him in a couple of inches to play in the correct key. Peter and Lois win first place, but Lois frets that she may have harmed his health for her own selfish need to win. Peter defensively tells her all of his brain cells are intact. But deep inside his brain, there is only one left, who (in a parody of The Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last") has just broken his glasses.

[edit] Notes

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The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

Former Saturday Night Live castmember Julia Sweeney makes a brief cameo as the woman Quagmire hits on in the beginning of the episode (the one who says, "I'm with my husband.")
Death reappears after “Death Is a Bitch” and it is revealed that he drives a Volkswagen Beetle. This part, also, reveals Death’s face. From this episode onwards, Death is voiced by Adam Carolla.
The sad “Lonely Man” song from the Hulk TV series, which Peter played earlier at Stewie’s request, is heard instead of the theme during the end credits. Stewie again imitates Bill Bixby hitchhiking as a car and a truck roll by.
The scene of Peter wincing in pain is referenced again in the A-Team spoof in the episode “Brian Goes Back to College”.
The music playing when Peter is working out how many tickets are left is the same as the bus music in “No Bones About It” in “Family Guy Viewer Mail 1.”
This episode is the one of the only recognizable times in the series that Mila Kunis does another voice besides Meg; she can be heard as one of the girls at the kegger party; she can also be heard in Jungle Love as one of Stewie's high-school friends (has the line "I'd love to!"). In contrast, Lacey Chabert did the voice of Nancy Bradford during the Eight Is Enough gag in Brian: Portrait of a Dog and the voice of the little girl in the bank robbery in A Hero Sits Next Door.
When Peter explains to Lois that "everyone has their sanctuary", he says "The Catholics have church, fat people have Wisconsin, and I have the Pawtucket Brewery." All the things that he explained apply to him, as he is Catholic and fat.
Despite the portrayal of the Pawtucket Patriot Brewery as a "magical place" parodying Willy Wonka's factory, Peter eventually gets a job in the shipping department of the brewery in "Jungle Love", where it has become a regular factory, due to Pawtucket Pat selling the place.

[edit] Censorship

Cuts made in syndication:
- The entire scene showing Death drinking beer when he goes to the frat party to pick up two dead bodies and subsequently driving into a police car is cut. This is Death's first official appearance since the episode "Death Is a Bitch," and is voiced by Adam Carolla unlike his first appearance, where in he is voiced by Norm Macdonald.
- The scene in the Pawtucket Brewery which shows the giant statue of a man drinking beer and urinating into a toilet sculpture is cut. It is replaced by the footage used at the beginning of the musical number.
- The scene at the concert hall, when the father lectures his son about his friend selling him bad drugs, is cut.
- The cutaway with Cap'n Crunch is cut.

[edit] Cultural references

This article or section contains too many minor or trivial fictional references.
Mere trivia, or references unimportant to the overall plot of a work of fiction, should be deleted. See also what Wikipedia is.

At the beginning of the episode, Meg is reading Popularity for Dummies.
The scene where Tom Tucker puts a carnivorous earwig into his brain references Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as well as the Night Gallery episode "The Caterpillar".^[1]
When the group enter the Beer Room, you can see two people who look exactly like Grandpa Joe and Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
A scene which Peter is on Password and Tony Randall is the opposite guesser, Peter says "you" as the hint for the password "Flaming".
The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones appears.
During Pat's song, he sings the line, "...you'll drive drunker than Oksana Baiul." This is a reference to Baiul's 1997 car crash incident.
At the end of The Mary Tyler Moore Show theme that Peter plays, Mary Richards is seen in the audience, whereupon she throws her hat in the air as she did in the opening credits of that show. She and the hat freeze as they do in the credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but in typical Family Guy bending of the rules, the audience around her keeps moving at normal speed.
Lois compares Peter to “the idiot” from Shine.
As Joe is being wheeled out of the brewery, he screams, "To hell with your stupid tour, I'm a Coors man anyway! Silver Bullet!", referring to the nickname of Coors Light beer.
In a scene, Cap'n Crunch is speaking to the don from “There's Something About Paulie” (who himself resembles Vito Corleone), requesting a hit on Count Chocula in retaliation for claims made by Count Chocula stating that Cap’n Crunch cuts the roof of peoples’ mouths, which makes light of the fact that some people find the cereal's texture abrasive.
The last scene, with the last brain cell in Peter’s brain, parodies The Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough at Last”. Also, the central plot involving Peter's musical talent bears some similarity to the episode "A Passage for Trumpet."
The name of "that sad going away song from The Incredible Hulk" that Peter plays and Stewie walks away to is "The Lonely Man."
Among the songs Peter plays on the piano while drunk include the themes from Dallas, The X-Files, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show

[edit] References

^ "IMDB.com, Night Gallery: The Caterpillar"

S. Callaghan, “Wasted Talent.” Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1–3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 120–122.
A. Delarte, “Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 2” in Bob’s Poetry Magazine, 2.May 2005: 27–28 http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02My.pdf