Peter's Lost Youth (Family Guy)

Peter's Lost Youth (Family Guy)
Think that Meg would never again become just as violent as she was in seasons 8-14? Boy, does Danny Smith have a story for you, and a BAD one at that.
Series: Family Guy Part of Season: 15 Episode Number: 17 Air Date: March 26, 2017 Writer: Danny Smith Director: Julius Wu Previous episode: "Saturated Fat Guy" Next episode: "The Peter Principal"

Peter's Lost Youth is the 17th episode of the 15th season of Family Guy. It was written by Danny Smith, while it was directed by Julius Wu. It aired on March 26, 2017.

Plot

Peter wins a week at a Red Sox fantasy baseball camp, where Lois upstages him. At the same time, Stewie runs away while Meg is watching him.

Why It Lost Its Youth

1. Meg is very unlikable here (being almost as bad as she was in "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven") in this episode as she leaves Stewie on timeout for a long time along with threatening go as far as to smack him (which is child abuse).
2. Peter is also unlikable as he purposely breaks Lois' (his own wife's) leg.
   • To be fair, Lois reveals that the reason she was going with Peter is to get away from the kids, to which she calls them life-sucking turds to their faces. However, this is still not justified.
3. While still likable, Brian is somewhat stupid for a moment in the episode, when he checks up on Stewie, he does nothing to help him because "Meg is in charge".
4. This episode uses the cliched “Peter becomes a jerk to Lois and then apologizes to her” plot, which has been used many times before.
5. There's one disturbing scene where Stewie cuts open a dead horse and then pulls out his guts and crawls inside the body at a petting zoo because he forgot his jacket.
   • What makes this worse is that kids and adults were watching and understandably horrified.
6. Stewie is portrayed as the person in the right for running away even though he did it just because Meg gave him a timeout, which she put him in because he refused to get dressed and attempt to defecate on the wall for no reason.
   • Because of the fact that Stewie ran away causes Meg to apologize to him, it causes the episode to teach a bad moral: running away from home solves all of your problems.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Stewie, Chris, Brian (for the most part), Cleveland, Joe, and Quagmire are likable, and Brian and Quagmire aren’t flanderized like they usually are.
   • Lois is also surprisingly likable in this episode, as she’s very sympathetic due to the way Peter horribly treats her, and aside from saying something mean-spirited to her husband, she’s still tolerable for the most part, and she isn’t flanderized like she usually is.
   • Meg also redeems herself later on in this episode after she apologizes to Stewie.
2. Speaking of which, The part where Meg apologizes to Stewie, he forgives her, and they hug is very heartwarming.
   • Speaking of Meg, she actually does realize she went too far and tries to find Stewie.
3. There's a surprisingly good piece of continuity, where Joe offers Peter a bloody Diskman, something the latter requested two episodes prior in "Cop and a Half-Wit".

Reception

This episode has a rating of 6.7/10 on IMDb. It also caused some Family Guy fans who hate these seasons to start to turn against Meg, who hasn’t fully recovered from flanderization until Season 16.

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