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Turban Cowboy is the fifteenth episode of the eleventh season of Family Guy. It originally aired on March 17, 2013, and is the 203rd episode overall of the series.
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 What's Family Guy's beef about Muslims?
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Plot
An unfortunate sky-diving accident sends Peter to the hospital, where he makes friends with a man named Mahmoud. Quagmire and Joe become suspicious of Mahmoud. Especially when Peter turns to Islam and gets a free mobile phone.
Why It Isn't A Turban
- The episode is very Islamophobic towards Muslims as the episode has Peter becoming friends with a Muslim man who is secretly a terrorist.
- Additionally, this episode tries to go for an anti-Islamophobia message when Brian calls Joe and Quagmire out for being cautious about Mahmoud, but that message is negated when the twist of the episode just ends up proving their suspicions were justified.
- The first act of the episode has loads of really boring filler that takes up the episode, such as showing scenes with Peter skydiving into various places.
- The infamous cutaway scene where Peter runs people over during the Boston Marathon.
- Because of this scene, the episode actually ended up being banned following the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013 (see the "Controversy" section below).
- The scene where Peter imagines his situation with Nathan Lane was way too random even for Family Guy cutaway standards.
- Horrible ending: Peter accidentally activates the terrorists' explosives, which causes a nearby bridge to explode, and he and his family and friends just slip away.
- This episode really shows Family Guy's true colors in the later seasons; no matter what serious topics the writers still working on the show will put into their episodes, they will not even try to balance their attempted humor with any form of seriousness.
Redeeming Qualities
- Despite the unnecessary filler, the first act with Peter becoming addicted to skydiving is decent.
- The scene where Peter skydives into Angry Birds was funny, as well as the scene where Peter forgets to open his parachute and ends up landing on the Eiffel Tower, despite being gory, and thinks he is in Paris; it actually turns out that he is in Vegas.
- There is at least some sort of message as Joe says that not all Muslims are bad, and every community has it's nutjob.
Reception
- The episode has a 6.7/10 on IMDb.
- Kevin McFarland from The A.V. Club gave the episode a D, and has this to say about it: "'Turban Cowboy' feels like an episode made in 2002 and left on the shelf for a decade, completely unaware of just how uniformly Middle Eastern characters are depicted as terrorists. If only Joe and Quagmire had chosen Peter's suggestion that they rob a Mafia poker game, then maybe this would've been a Family Guy send-up of Killing Them Softly instead."
Controversy
One of the cutaway gags in the episode involves Peter committing mass murder at the Boston Marathon by plowing his car through the runners, the scene in particular gained controversy after the events of the annual Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013, which involved two terrorists planting two homemade pressure cooker bombs, which detonated 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 p.m., near the finish line of the race, killing 3 people and injuring hundreds of others, including 17 who lost limbs.
Following the events of the bombings, Fox promptly removed the episode from Fox.com and the episode was banned from TV airings, digital distribution and Hulu in the USA.
A clip circulated on the Internet with the Boston Marathon scene edited together with another scene from the same episode showing remote detonations of bombs, to make it appear that Family Guy predicted or inspired the bombings. This was first put forth by conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Alex Jones on his website and on Twitter.
The series creator, Seth MacFarlane himself was disgusted over people editing the clip to make it look like Peter committed the Boston Marathon bombing (which is especially notable because of Seth's general apathy towards the series nowadays). He considered the April 15, 2013 bombing a major tragedy and showed sympathy for anyone affected by it. He's on record that, much like "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven" and "Fore, Father", makes him regrets making the episode.
Trivia
- Although the episode has been banned in the USA following the Boston Marathon bombings of April 15, 2013, the episode is still available to watch through FOX8, ITV2, digital distribution and on Disney+ in the UK and Canada.