Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q (Family Guy)
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 One of the few examples where Family Guy tried to tackle a serious subject, but failed miserably as a result…
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Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q, also simply known as Screams of Silence, is an episode of Family Guy from season 10.
Plot
When Quagmire almost kills himself attempting autoerotic asphyxiation, his sister Brenda comes to his aid. However, Quagmire finds out soon after that she is being abused by her boyfriend Jeff.
Why This Story Should Leave in Silence
- The episode is poorly written and does not correctly portray the mindset of a domestically abused person very well.
- More infuriatingly, Courage the Cowardly Dog, a show aimed at kids, was able to tackle the serious subject matter of abusive relationships in the episode "The Mask" much more tastefully, respectfully and with dignity compared to Family Guy, a show aimed at adults which is no longer hampered by network censorship interference as of Season 8. You know you've failed BIG TIME when a children's cartoon show like Courage the Cowardly Dog can tackle this serious subject matter properly way better than an adult-oriented animated sitcom-like Family Guy could.
- All of the characters apart from Brenda are unlikeable in this episode.
- The abuser himself, Jeff Fecalman, is also a written portrayal, and his characterization is very flat and one-dimensional as he openly abuses his girlfriend Brenda in plain sight and front of her family so he can take every bit of anger out on her for everything!.
- Quagmire, while he does care about his sister, is not much better than Jeff. He doesn't even bother protecting Brenda from Jeff's abuse when it's right in front of him - instead, he sets up an intervention for Brenda instead of Jeff and blames her for not standing up to Jeff and leaving him, even though she's too psychologically damaged to do it herself, so basically Quagmire is mentally abusing Brenda, making him hypocritical.
- Joe doesn't do anything about Jeff, despite being a police officer, a figure of authority who is supposed to arrest anyone who breaks the law, which is exactly what abusing someone is.
- Joe was a complete hypocrite in this episode, he claims that he couldn't arrest Jeff unless Brenda filed a complaint and reports Jeff to him herself, which ultimately isn’t true in real life, even though he clearly sees Jeff abuse Brenda right in front of him and does nothing about it immediately despite being a cop, and later on tells Quagmire he could arrest him for just suggesting to kill Jeff, only to agree to his plan to kill Jeff when he should arrest him in the first place.
- This episode sends a bad message to viewers claiming that if someone's leading an assault against someone either alone or with their buddies that the victim is the only one who can go to the police, which shows that the writers did not bother doing their research on this type of subject, making the episode completely pointless since the writers did no research.
- Note this: If you even make that claim and don't do anything as a police officer, in reality, you could be fired, and/or worse, end up in a lawsuit.
- To be fair, the family of the victim of an abusive relationship doesn't necessarily need to be involved unless they know for sure that the victim is being abused (in real life), but this fails because Jeff openly beats Brenda in front of Quagmire and his friends, and they don't do anything about it immediately.
- Peter and his friends themselves are even more horrible in this episode because murder is "the solution to everyone's problems", they all go together to kill Jeff to save Brenda from her relationship, despite it only hurting her more. Yes, Jeff was abusing her to death, but there are better ways to deal with it. They could have just hidden a camera and recorded Jeff being abusive and used it as evidence in court, or they could have used the footage to expose the issue to the press.
- Everyone blames Brenda, the victim, for staying with Jeff when she’s already too paranoid and psychologically damaged to do anything. They even set up an intervention for Brenda to discuss how the abuse is affecting their lives. To be fair though, they were disgusted by and despised the way Jeff was treating her, but that's no excuse to blame someone who is already damaged by a man who constantly beats her over everything.
- The episode never explains why Jeff abuses Brenda constantly.
- Hypocrisy: The episode contradicts the moral from the previous episode, which was a horrible one to begin with, showing no consistency between the episodes and implying that abuse is bad only if a non-main character experiences it.
- Barely any other jokes besides ones about abuse are used.
- Peter's line suggesting baby names when Brenda is pregnant like "Slappy", "Bruisey", and "Keep-It-Down-In-There-sy" tries to come off as funny but ends up being distasteful.
- The infamous cutaway where Meg pops a zit, which can make anyone who sees it sick and has nothing to do with the episode.
- Also, Peter, Joe, and Quagmire do not find out about Jeff’s motivation for abusing Brenda since his death.
- Abysmal ending: After Jeff gets his comeuppance by being killed by Quagmire with Peter's car, the episode ends with Quagmire, Joe, and Peter forging a letter that states that Brenda is garbage instead of telling her that Jeff has been taken care of via murder. This is not right because abusive relationships can also hurt the minds of others. So, as a result, Brenda is now in an even worse state after this episode. To be fair, they were trying to make it look like Jeff wrote it, but it's then ruined by Joe of all characters saying, "Plus, she kinda is garbage, Quagmire."
- Ended Yearim's career on the series on a terrible note. After this episode, every episode is now animated by Digital eMation going forward.
Redeeming Qualities
- There 3 scenes were a bit funny:
- The Portuguese/Porch of Geese.
- The Clown Porn scene is pretty funny.
- The "Iraq Lobster" cutaway was also pretty funny (although it was kinda offensive to some Middle Eastern communities) and is pretty tame.
- The episode also shows that Quagmire is more than just a pervert, but a loving brother as he does care about his sister Brenda as mentioned above.
- Jeff does get his comeuppance and is killed by Quagmire.
- Despite being portrayed poorly as an abuse victim, Brenda is the ONLY likable character in the whole episode.
Reception
"Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q" was universally panned by fans, audiences, critics, and even viewers alike, and is widely considered the worst episode of Family Guy along with some other episodes like "Life of Brian", "Seahorse Seashell Party", "Brian's a Bad Father", "You Can't Handle the Booth!" etc., it was placed as number 8 on Phantom Strider's "Top 10 Worst Family Guy Episodes" list, and currently sits at a rating of 6.2/10 on IMDb.
Trivia
- The episode ended up having its own news story for how it treats domestic violence as a joke.
What Should've Happened/How To Fix This Episode
Here's a list of things that should have happened in this episode, in order in case the above Solution fails:
General
- Improve the writing.
- Make domestic violence as a serious topic instead of a joke.
- Have Jeff abuse Brenda in private, not in public/in front of people. In real life, abusers display their behavior in private, in public, they act nice and hide the fact they are abusing someone.
- Make Quagmire, Peter and Joe likable to the point where they know about Jeff's abusive nature.
- Have Jeff explain to Quagmire, Peter and Joe on why he became a domestic abuser in the first place.
- Replace the cutaway gag of Meg popping a zit.
- Optional: Have Joe to arrest Jeff to the point where he'll be sentenced to death through execution as his alternate comeuppance.
- Optional: Have Brenda to lash her anger on Jeff where she starts standing up to him, and the latter breaking up with him for good. Similar to Mina Beff standing up to Trina Riffin in the Grojband series finale episode, "Hear Us Rock".
- Include a backstory for Jeff that explains the reason for why he abuses Brenda constantly.
- Remove the hypocrisy.
- Redo the ending. (by having Quagmire, Joe and Peter telling Brenda that Jeff is now taken care of and gone for good, so he won't abuse her ever again, along with them encouraging her to grow stronger and live a better life without him as she'll slowly recover from her trauma.)
Videos
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fME5bhdcoFE/</nowiki> https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2040800/</nowiki> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xkKB2b6w44</nowiki>
External Links
Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q at the Internet Movie Database
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