A random Family Guy question.
Recently I’ve been going back and watching as many of the Family Guy episodes I’ve missed as possible. And now I find myself scrambling to pick up a joke that blew right by me the first time because my viewing habit had grown, for various reasons, somewhat spotty.
I’m pulling up old episodes to find the gag, a play on words and accents that Generation X, at least, might remember from school days. The main focus of the joke is words starting with the consonant blend wh-. And it’s true, for those who have never heard the lesson before. Listen to how people say these words, and where the h occurs.
But they’ve done it with a couple other words, too:
- 6.08 (5ACX03) — “Barely Legal”: Brian and Stewie, “Cool Whip”; Brian and Meg, “a while” and “weird”; Quagmire and two women, “whip”.
- 7.11 (6ACX03) — “Love, Blactually”: Brian and Stewie, “ruined”.
- 7.11 (6ACX17) — “Not All Dogs Go to Heaven”: Patrick Stewart and Stewie, “Wil Wheaton”.
Mostly, I’m curious as to how many more times they tried this bit. They ran the legs off the gag in “Barely Legal”, and one thing I adore about McFarlane and company is their ability to beat a dead horse until it’s funny. I tend to think one of the merits of Family Guy is that they learned the applicable lesson from that legendary Simpsons episode, “Cape Feare”: If you do it right, there is no such thing as doing a joke to death.
(Kudos, however, are in order for the death of Vern and Johnny—”The Vaudville Guys”—in the episode, “Saving Private Brian”, even if they did bring them back as ghosts a year later.)
Anyway, yeah. Any clues on how many episodes they’ve worked this bit into?
B.D.'s Last Refuge 
that’s the great thing about that show — you can watch it several times and always catch something you missed before
Family guy is just plain fantastic, i have watched every episode so far and it never gets tired.