Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, and a legless Joe are stranded.
"The Perfect Castaway" is an episode from the fourth season of the FOX animated series Family Guy. The episode was scheduled to air on September 11, 2005, but was pushed back a week due to Hurricane Katrina (because the episode references a hurricane).[1] The title of the episode is a parody of two movies, The Perfect Storm and Cast Away, while the storyline lampoons both movies.
Plot summary
To get food to feed his family, Peter Griffin goes in search of fish at Pelican's Reef at the suggestion of salty Seamus, with Glen Quagmire, Joe Swanson, and Cleveland Brown tagging along for the free beer. They find the reef, but unbeknownst to them a hurricane has been approaching them and their fishing boat is sunk by a rogue wave in a scene resembling the Perfect Storm movie. They survive by floating adrift on a raft built out of Quagmire's sex dolls. Unfortunately, they have no food, so Peter eats the legs of Joe, a paraplegic, from the knees on down. They manage to find a deserted island to set ashore on. After being presumed lost at sea, a memorial service is held for the sailors with Mayor Adam West "stabbing the cruel, unforgiving sea" with a knife. Brian marries Lois to support the family, working as a salesman at a Hummer dealership. However, he and Lois sleep in separate beds, much to Brian's frustration. In one scene, Brian storms out of the bedroom and proclaims he’ll be in the basement. Upon being asked what he's going to do, his response is "what do you think?" implying masturbation.
Several months later, the four men believe they must have an orgy to satisfy "certain needs". This fails, with nothing happening (no mention is made of the blow up dolls). While they are naked in a pile, a passing cruise ship spots them. Cleveland takes time during the trip to shoot skeet, which is revealed as shooting and injuring Skeet Ulrich, who was a passenger on the ship. Joe gets a new set of legs from a death row inmate who got the electric chair. Unfortunately the inmate was also a paraplegic. Peter finally returns home and meets his family, who are surprised and overjoyed to see him. Lois, however, then admits that she has married Brian. After Lois tells him why she is with Brian, Peter leaves and gets a room in a hotel in Downtown Quahog. Brian wants to talk to her about the situation she is in (in order to get into her pants).
In an attempt to win Lois back, Peter goes to the house, where Lois finds him naked and lying on the couch. His plan succeeds and they have sex on the tipped over chair, where Stewie finds and videotapes them. The next night, Lois runs out of the house with a saddle. Stewie shows the tape to Brian, who goes to the hotel that Peter is staying at and sees a silhouette of Peter and Lois having sex (and then one of Alfred Hitchcock. When Brian gets to the door of Peter's room, he is about to burst in and confront them when he overhears Lois tells Peter that she made a commitment to Brian and must stay with him. Brian changes his mind and leaves without confronting them. When Lois gets home, Brian explains that he knows Lois still feels torn between her two husbands and tells her to go back to Peter, and the two mutually divorce while still maintaining their good friendship. The next day, however, she admits that she was a day away from having sex with him (telling him that she was going to take him "around the freakin' world"). Brian, frustrated at this revelation, tells the family he’ll be in the basement again. Stewie doesn't get the reference.
Cultural references
- Lois and Brian watch Gilmore Girls, in a scene in which Lorelai and Rory talk very fast—a reference to the manner in which dialogue is spoken in the show, often fast-paced and laden with pop references. They then inexplicably make out. Daniel Palladino, a producer on Family Guy, is the husband of Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, and wrote several episodes of that series.
- During one flashback scene, Peter recalls a farting contest he had in a bathroom with Michael Moore. While the farts start off normal, they eventually break into the tune of “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance.
- "Hurricane RuPaul is making his or her way up" is a reference to drag queen RuPaul.
- When Peter is talking to Meg about protecting herself by using a condom, he compares it to a Hefty trash bag by using their trademark saying “Hefty! Hefty! Hefty! Wimpy! Wimpy! Wimpy!”.
- Peter recalls trying going back to the past by driving a De Lorean through a wall. This is reference to Back to the Future, including a Wilhelm Scream.
- Peter misses Captain Caveman, a Hanna-Barbera cartoon character from the late 1970s. He keeps a picture of Captain Caveman in a pocket watch, just as Tom Hanks's character kept a picture of Helen Hunt's character in Cast Away.
- Meg dated the announcer from the Super Friends. The voice is provided by Seth MacFarlane.
- Herbert the ephebophile hums “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin when he asks Brian if the car dealership had an ice cream truck.
- When Brian goes to the motel to confront Lois and Peter, he sees them in silhouette. Then you see a different person come into silhouette with a specific music. The person is Alfred Hitchcock, and the music is the theme from his TV show (Alfred Hitchcock Presents). The silhouette is his trademark introduction to the show.
- Peter recalls being on a fictitious game show entitled Bobcat or Bjork? [sic] in which he was to guess whether or not he was listening to a sound clip of comedian Bobcat Goldthwait or Icelandic musical artist Björk.
- During a game of I Never, among various other things Quagmire drinks to having sex with a woman while the lights were on, having sex with Cleveland's wife (seen in "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire"), having sex with a woman in a Logan Airport bathroom, giving a reach around to a spider monkey while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and performing erotic asphyxiation with an illegal alien from Home Depot (a reference later used in Lois Kills Stewie) then doing the same thing with someone from Jo-Ann Fabrics.
- While Kobe Bryant is being interrogated for his suspected rape of Katelyn Faber, he spins a basketball on his finger, distracting the guards.
- Peter's ancestor Ponce de Leon Griffin discovers the Fountain of Youth.
- The scene where Peter sprays whipped cream from an aerosol can all over his chest and privates to seduce Lois is similar to a scene from the movie Varsity Blues.
- Peter plans on using the fishing money to finance his Christmas album, featuring Peter's own mumbling and/or parodied versions of “Sleigh Ride”, “Little Drummer Boy”, and “Carol of the Bells”.
Reception
This episode aired in the U.K. on September 23, 2005 and garnered 4.30 million viewers.citation needed
References
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