Meg Stinks!

"Meg Stinks!" is the nineteenth episode of the twelfth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the 229th episode overall. It aired on Fox in the United States on May 4, 2014, and is written by Danny Smith and directed by Bob Bowen. In the episode, Meg goes for a college interview and becomes the life of a party while Brian encounters a skunk and after getting sprayed, must learn to survive in the wild.^[1]

Plot

Meg Griffin and her parents attend James Woods High School's College Fair where they find out that not only is Meg considered a top student (with a solid B average, despite the fact that none of the teachers want to trade sex for higher grades with her), but Principal Shepherd arranged an interview for her at her first-choice college in Vermont. Peter and Lois fight it out offscreen to see who has to take her and Peter loses. On the way to the Green Mountain College, Peter is his usual dismissive self towards her, and he doesn't order her any food at a diner until he finds out that Meg knows a lot about his likes when she went to the diner's jukebox and put on Night Moves by Bob Seger (who Peter then tells Meg thought up all his songs, the aforementioned included, while taking bowel movements), and they bond as Peter explains with stunning clarity that he had a family because he didn't like to use condoms and lost out on a promising career as a podiatrist to take his loathed job at the toy factory and support his new family. Arriving at the school, they find a party and continue to be friends. Back home, they reveal that they missed the interview as Lois scolds them. Meg defends their actions because this is the first time she has ever gotten anything positive out of her interactions with her father.

Meanwhile, Brian goes outside to read in peace and quiet because of Stewie and Chris watching Extreme Makeover: Bethenny Frankel Edition. When he hears a noise, he discovers a skunk and is sprayed. After various attempts by the Griffin Family to get rid of the skunk smell on Brian fail, Lois sends Brian to live outside until the skunk smell wears off. After Stewie is dismissive of Brian and berates him about not being able to handle living outside, Brian discovers he can hunt and eat in the wild after catching a hummingbird as well as run faster on all fours. As the smell fades, Brian finds he is meant to stay outdoors and starts to act like a wild dog while sporting a beard and long hair. Stewie feels unhappy that the balance in the house is off and begs Brian to return to his old life. Brian refuses until it starts to thunderstorm, bolting for the house.

Lois starts to get lonely as Peter and Meg continue staying out and having wacky adventures, and advises Meg to watch hanging out with Peter as he could ruin her future. Meg dismisses Lois' concerns but Peter's stunts begin to wear on Meg since everything he does is exhausting. When they return, Meg admits that she is having trouble dealing with Peter and asks for help, but Lois insists she work it out on her own as part of growing up. Meg reschedules her interview and tells Peter that she is going on her own, preferring he be her father instead of her friend. Peter wails as Meg departs. Meg's narration revealed that she got into her choice college, contracted HPV her first day there and got the nickname "Warthog."

Reception

Eric Thurm of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, saying "So this episode is called “Meg Stinks!” The title, at first, does not bode particularly well—the Meg hatred well has simply been exhausted too many times and in too obnoxious ways, concentrated most recently in this season’s terrible "A Fistful of Meg.” There are a bunch of garden-variety “Meg is gross” jokes in this episode about her unattractiveness and “stupidity,” but they feel perfunctory in a way that makes them boring and mildly distracting rather than straight-up irritating, and are mostly filtered through Peter’s blinkered perspective rather than simply the show pronouncing her as horrible. Mostly, “Meg Stinks!” is a vast improvement over “A Fistful of Meg” in almost every way, primarily because it’s actually more reminiscent of one of my favorite episodes of Family Guy: “Road to Rupert.” Like that episode, “Meg Stinks!” features a surprisingly effective Meg-Peter plot and, while it doesn’t have an all-time great Stewie-Brian story, it’s still solid."^[2]

The episode received a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 years old demographic and was watched by a total of 4.40 million people. This made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night, beating American Dad!, Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons.^[3]

References

• The plot description was adapted from Meg Stinks! at Family Guy Wiki, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.