TVSquad

Although it's not quite the season premiere that Fox had originally planned on showing, it was still a fantastic episode, although I did have a couple of complaints, but I'll get to those in a bit. Family Guy is such a fantastic foil to The Simpsons, taking advantage of the realm of animation to the extreme, in this episode alone we traveled to both Bedrock and the deck of the starship Enterprise. A person could almost go insane trying to review Family Guy because there's probably only a little over 10 minutes of actual episode, the rest of the time being bought up by flashbacks, flashforwards, musical numbers, flashsideways...
 The episode starts with a quick bit with Peter and Brian watching Arnold Palmer making random statements ("The best meal I've ever had is grilled cheese, tomato soup, and warm tea") to a room full of elderly people and them all agreeing. Lois is walking out to go to her book club meeting when she reminds Peter that he has to go to the PTA meeting for Meg's school.  Peter doesn't feel like going and cons Brian into going by jogging his memory of a favor Peter performed for him, concerning a certain dance. At the meeting Brian meets an attractive black teacher Shauna (voiced by the insanely hot Gabrielle Union) whom he immediately hits it off with. After a couple of awkward moments and blowing Peter off for his new found love interest, Brian finds himself trying to make conversation and suggests that Quahog should rename James Wood high school to MLK high school.

The suggestion takes off and Brian finds himself arguing in front of the school board (complete with creepy CPR instructor) for name change, everything seems to be going  well until Peter breaks in with James Woods. James Woods, however, argues for the name change, however, the school board sees this as such a classy move that they keep the school James Woods High...uh, however. This aggravates Shauna and Brian sides with her driving a deeper wedge between him and Peter. James Woods quickly becomes Peter's new "main man" as they spend more and more time together, camping out, telling scary stores, playing frisbee, and even fit in a musical number: I have James Woods.

After Brian walks in on JW sleeping at the foot of Peter and Lois' bed he comes to the realization that maybe a girl isn't worth losing his best friend over. And after James Woods makes Peter watch his half-naked performance in Videodrome, Peter comes to a similar realization about losing his best friend. At the Drunken Clam, Peter meets up with Brian and while telling a story about the day him and JW had at the park, Peter and Brian manage to patch up their relationship with one simple exchange:
Brian:"Where's James Woods?"
Peter:"Wasn't good at catching things in his mouth. Where's your girl?"
Brian:"Same problem."
Both"Whooooooah"
The two rig up a That 70's Show type scheme and capture James with some candy and a box. The episode ends with Brian asking what happened to JW when we get a view of the box he was captured in getting nailed shut and stored in a Indiana Jones-esque storage facility. He's being examined by top men. Top Men.

This show had some great moments and while it was funny through-out, where was everyone else? This was the Peter, Brian, James half hour. Stewie had a hilarious bit about reading the DaVinci code, but we got no payoff. Lois and Quagmire only had a few lines between them and I can only think of Chris and Meg having one each. I love Peter and Brian as much as any other fan, and again, the episode was good, not their best, but good, I don't want to see this become a trend and certainly hope Seth MacFarlane isn't stretching himself too thin.

Pop References of the Week:
Stewie playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller
The toilet that Barnie Rubble used in the Flintstones comparison: A bird with a very "crappy" job.
The Star Trek scene actually voiced by Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes and Michael Dorn. "Worf has a fanny head"