Family Guy/Barely Legal

Barely Legal
Season 5, Episode 8
Airdate	December 17, 2006
Written by
Directed by
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Family Guy — Season Five

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Barely Legal is the eighth episode of the fifth season of Family Guy, and the eighty-eighth episode overall.

This episode sees Meg becoming obsessed with Brian after he takes her to the Junior Prom, and Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire joining the police force after the rest of the department is deployed for an out-of-town search-and-rescue mission for a non-existant victim.

Guest Stars: Drew Barrymore (as Jillian)

Plot Overview

Meg pines desperately for a date to the junior prom, and is cruelly shot down by Connie and her friends when Meg reveals she has none. Later, Meg goes to a classmate's house to ask him out, but gunfire quickly rings out; the boy cries out that his little brother just got fatally shot, thereby creating his excuse. In a moment of despondency, Meg takes out a butcher knife and is about to kill herself. Brian intervenes, learns the reason why Meg was trying to commit suicide, and offers to be her prom date. An overjoyed Meg is ready for her big night, but Brian has only agreed to take her to the dance out of pity.

At the dance, Brian clearly would be somewhere else and - having snuck in a flask of whiskey - gets very drunk. Meg gets Brian to slow dance with him. Later, Connie makes a rude remark about Meg's date ("no dogs are allowed," she says), but Brian puts Connie in her place. An overjoyed Meg passionately kisses Brian on the lips; he reciprocates, but immediately vomits, then tries to reassure her that it wasn't because of the kiss.

The next morning, a grateful Meg acts unusually flirtatious with Brian, something Stewie quickly picks up on. Later, Meg suggests to the dog that they become a couple; Brian, clearly uncomfortable at this point, tries to find a way out by claiming that he is a homosexual. This does little to dissuade Meg, who offers to take Brian to the mall to shop for sexy underwear - a committment Brian tries unsuccessfully to back out of. Later, Brian goes to Lois for advice on handling the situation, and lets slip about the two's big kiss at the dance. Lois is furious and orders Brian to set things right. When Brian tries to tell Meg that he never will be attracted to her and that he already has a girlfriend, Meg decides she needs to take things one step farther.

Meanwhile, Mayor West views a showing of the movie Romancing the Stone, where one of the characters in that movie, Elaine, is kidnapped. Apparently not realizing or ignorant to the fact that the movie was fiction, West deploys the entire Quahog Police department to Cartagena, Colombia, to "rescue" Elaine. Joe, because he is paralyzed, is the only officer not invited to go on West's search-and-rescue mission. Joe, apparently the acting chief, needs help running the department, and Peter, Cleveland and Quagmire offer to join the department. After several training exercises at the police academy go awry, the newly deputized officers go out on the rounds.

Peter - eager to shoot someone - soon learns that police officers do not always have action-packed days, nor is it always about "beating up" uncooperative criminals who resist arrest. Peter and the others get their chance at being heroes when Chris lets slip that Meg has dog-napped Brian. Meg, upset at Brian spurning her, had cold-cocked him with a large bag of dog food, then threw him in the trunk of his car while he was unconscious.

The officers track Meg down to a fancy hotel, where she undresses and (having bound Brian to a chair) tries to do a lap dance as foreplay to her end goal: sex. Peter arrives just in time to rescue Brian. Quagmire - who has apparently known Meg since she was a little girl - strips to his underwear, puts on a ball gag ... and helps Meg realize that she doesn't need a boyfriend right now, handing her a copy of the Shel Silverstein book "The Missing Piece" to reinforce his moral.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Criticism of the War in Iraq — The motivation for the subplot — Mayor West sending his police force on a mission to seek a non-existant victim — could easily be inferred as being an allusion to critics of the War in Iraq, who have claimed that Iraq posed no threat and had no weapons of mass destruction (as some have claimed).
• Oliver — The scene of the Artful Dodger giving a group of orphan boys a pep talk before sending them out on their pickpocketing rounds is inspired by the Broadway musical. Their first victim is a more-than-willing Herbert.
• Police Academy — Much of the subplot — Peter and his friends joining the police force — is inspired by the 1984 movie and its sequels.
• Split-screen closing credits - The end credits of this episode are split-screen style for the epilogue (Tom Tucker's Quahog 5 News teaser, where the stories include Mayor West's lifting the police deployment to Colombia). This is a reflection of the recent trend of closing credits in all TV shows, one of the uses being for news broadcast previews.
• Stalker movies — The episode featured several allusions to movies where the main characters become obsessed with seducing potential suitors after being spurned:
  • Casino — Meg's line, "Can you feel me, Brian? Can you feel me inside you?" is taken from the 1995 movie.
  • Fatal Attraction — Much of the plot (a love-famished-turned-obsessed woman's desire to snag a less-than-willing potential suitor) — specifically Meg's line, ""I won't be ignored," and a scene where she manipulates Brian's collar against his will — are patterend after the 1987 thriller starring Glenn Close.
  • The King of Comedy — The climatic scene — Meg kidnapping Brian, tying him up and then stripping in an effort to seduce him — is based on a scene in the 1983 movie (where Sandra Bernhard's love-obsessed character has done the same to Jerry Lewis).
• Romancing the Stone — Mayor West watches the 1984 action movie at the beginning of the episode, as the set-up scene to the episode's subplot.
• Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment — Garrett Morris's appearance as President of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing parodies the same role he frequently played on the "Weekend Update" segment of SNL.
• The Wiz — The black persons' parade is a parody of the climatic scene in the 1975 musical.

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