Family Guy Duo Breaks Down Stewie’s Biggest Therapy Reveals: His Sexuality, His Real [Spoiler] and More
Sunday’s episode of Family Guy, the first in its 16-season history to air without commercials, invited us to become flies on the wall of a Stewie Griffin therapy session — and boy did we learn a lot.
Or maybe I should say we had many of our preconceived notions about the Griffin’s youngest, most evil member confirmed to us — from his sexuality (“‘Fluid’ is a something I hear being tossed around a lot,” he said before questioning whether “heterosexual” is even a real word) to his fake British accent, which his actual British therapist (voiced by Ian McKellen) saw right through. Not that he’ll get to tell anyone about it. R.I.P., Dr. Pritchfield!
TVLine spoke with executive producer Rich Appel and writer Gary Janetti for the inside story on Sunday’s bold, revelatory episode:
STEWIE’S ‘FLUID’ SEXUALITY | By telling his therapist that he could relax, this wasn’t going to be a coming-out story, he was “almost addressing the audience’s expectations,” Janetti explains. “Stewie’s awareness of his sexuality is this uncertain thing, and that needs to stay as it is. His uncertainty gives him a vulnerability, which is something we need to maintain for the series. Whether he is [gay] or not, that isn’t going to be answered when he’s a one-year-old. But if you read between the lines, it’s not that difficult to decipher. He’s not even sure ‘heterosexual’ is a real word!”
Adds Appel, “We also talked to [creator Seth MacFarlane] whose opinion was to not lean into [Stewie’s sexuality] too much. He’s still a baby. He doesn’t know yet, and sexuality is a very fluid matter. It’s better to keep that as something that’s not determined yet.”
THAT ‘GRANT GUSTIN’ REFERENCE | Despite being “less gay” than he used to be, Stewie acknowledged that he and The Flash‘s Grant Gustin, whom he described as a “young Anthony Perkins,” would make a cute Instagram couple. “I didn’t have to look it up,” Janetti says of Gustin’s name. “A lot of this episode was my stream of consciousness because I wanted it to feel like his stream of consciousness. So I was just letting him ramble. No one was going to stop him. And Grant Gustin just felt like someone Stewie would like.”
STEWIE’S — GASP! — REAL VOICE | Despite writing Stewie’s real (aka non-British) voice into his episode’s script, Janetti didn’t actually know how it would sound until MacFarlane gave it a shot at the table read. “I liked the idea of that being the reveal,” Janetti says. “It felt truthful that somebody who didn’t feel like he fit in would create an artificial personality. To an extent, that’s what he’s done. And then to have Ian’s character — the one person he’s sharing this big secret with — not even hear the difference was another fun opportunity. It felt like a good way to show Stewie’s insecurities in a way that felt truthful to the history of the series.”
THAT HAMILTON SEGMENT | It may not have been a “reveal,” but we’ll never be able to wash the image of Stewie’s snotty Hamilton performance from our brains — not that we’d want to. And Janetti says much of the credit belongs to director Joe Vaux: “In the script, it’s just written as a piece of snot coming out of his nose, then as he gets more emotional it starts to go into his mouth. But it became suspenseful the way he did it. Joe gets a lot of credit for taking a simple stage direction and turning it into a tour de force presentation.”
ONE MORE THING… | As for the whole “commercial-free” aspect of tonight’s episode, allow Appel to explain: “Our table reads are always longer than broadcast allows, so we find out what doesn’t work and we trim it down. After this table read, I think it was Jonathan Gabay, the Fox executive who works on our show, who said, “Gee, how do you cut this down?” It really was a successful table read and an unusual episode, and he said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we ran this without commercial interruption?” That’s when the script started making its way up the network. And Gary Newman, who’s one of the chairmen of the company, loved it and immediately said, “We’ll do this with or without a sponsor. It should be commercial-free.”
Which of Sunday’s reveals and/or confirmations had your jaw dropping? Grade the episode below, then leave us a comment with your full review.
but was it all just a nightmare or not? DISCUSS!
So disapointing and even gave me anxiety from the ranting and whinning. Ultimate let down.
I’m guessing you’ve never been to therapy yourself, or you’d realize that’s what it is: a place to rant/whine/cry.
I’ve been in therapy most of my adult life, and I felt anxious too! I get that it’s a place to rant/whine/cry, but there wasn’t any breathing space, no time for any context…but hey, it IS Family Guy, lol.
It was interesting but in no way needed to be commercial free. Monologues went on so long it was tough to not fast forward. Really needed more editing down to he interesting
I found the whole heart attack segment super sad… :(
was it all just a nightmar
It was an interesting episode, but not a very funny one, and the show’s primary function is to make us laugh.
It wasn’t so special that it needed to be commercial free, though I kind of wish more shows would cut out commercials for content.
But the whole point of commercial television is to – gasp – sell us stuff.
No mention of that take down by Stewie? That was great/funny/terrifying. Stewie really is a genius, and potentially a evil genius. Loved that part, as well as Sir Ian’s call back to it later.
A lot of hype over next to nothing. The no commercials just seemed like an excuse to have Stewie do that excruciatingly long monologue about his therapist’s love life and then snot all over the couch doing ‘Hamilton’. The kid cries a lot about not having friends and then murders a guy. It was just stupid and pointless. Stewie’s real voice/Seth’s other character voices that the therapist couldn’t hear was the only funny/good part of the whole episode.
I have watched every episode of Family Guy and for me this was the worst episode ever. First episode I didn’t watch all of. Stopped watching caring after the huge monologue and Hamilton parts and jumped to the end. Most boring and useless episode of the entire series in my opinion. I was hoping for so much more.
I dont know who’s voting in that poll, but imo, this episode was garbage. People watch Family Guy to laugh and this episode was void of humor(except some select moments from the therapist). They were trying to be deep and sophisticated with this episode and it fell flatter than Stewie’s monolog. To make it worse, they undercut all of the hearfelt moments by whatever the hell the last 5 minutes were trying to accomplish.
What will they cut to show this in syndication?
i was excited for a Hamilton performance,only to end up almost puking…
the episode was very bad. i expected so much much more.
An over hyped episode with murderous Stewie talking to a psychologist, and then at the end, he lets the doctor die from a heart attack, (very similar to a Bette Davis 1941 movie; The Little Foxes), because, the doctor knew too much to be allowed to live. The ending was predictable, because, Stewie has murdered so many people in the past, what’s one more death? It sure looked like they were trying real hard to make an Emmy winning episode and failed with an ending that was so similar to other shows where Stewie kills another person at the conclusion.
I don’t think it was a nightmare, however, it will probably be like other episodes where something important happens and all is forgotten for the rest of the series.
Such as the episode where Peter lost his job, worked in a Renaissance Fair, and next episode was fully employed again.
“And then there were fewer” saw the deaths of several characters who have never returned, yet that seems to be the exception to the rule.
I really doubt if this episode will have any lasting effects. Stewie did murder the psychologist, just like he murdered other people, and the series forgot about the victims eventually.
The script went to the network after the table read? That’s not how it works…