I Never Met the Dead Man

Plot

Annoyed that Peter spends more time watching television than with his own family, Lois suggests he teach Meg how to drive. Peter reluctantly agrees, and unwittingly gives Meg a series of bad driving tips, including instructing her to "rev" her engine twice at stop lights and challenge other drivers to a race, which causes her to ultimately fail her driving test. As Peter drives them home from the DMV he notices that a show he wanted to watch is on television in a nearby house. Distracted by the show, he crashes the car into the main cable television transmitter, knocking out reception for the whole entire town of Quahog. Panicking, Peter makes a promise to Meg so that if she takes the blame for knocking down the cable transmitter, she would get a new convertible when she finally gets her licence. Once they arrive home with the transmitter still attached to the car, Lois becomes furious with Peter for placing the blame on his own daughter. Meg, of course, is blamed, and is about to admit the truth, but then decides to keep quiet, reflecting with an inner voice, a reference to The Wonder Years, at school. This shows an incredible lack of good judgment and morals by Peter. Meanwhile, Stewie, (seeing the opportunity of the dish attached to car), steals the satellite dish in a plan to create a weather control device capable of destroying the world's supply of broccoli, since Lois had forced him to eat the vegetable earlier that day.

Suffering withdrawal syndrome from the lack of cable, Peter straps a television-sized cardboard cutout to himself, making it appear as though his whole world is actually a television programme. When Meg can no longer deal with the public scorn, she reveals that her father is really responsible for Quahog's loss of television, causing the town to turn against him. In an attempt to save Peter from further scorn and verbal attacks, Lois gives a heartfelt speech to the community about how television has kept them all from enjoying one another. Inspired by the speech, Peter drags the family to one outdoor activity after another, which quickly exhausts them. Once the family can no longer keep up with him, Peter decides to go off with William Shatner, who has appeared on the Griffin family doorstep after experiencing a flat tire, to a nearby festival. Meanwhile, Stewie's weather machine creates a huge rainstorm. The storm's lightning strike destroys Stewie's weather machine and blows Stewie off the roof and on the ground. While Meg is practicing driving with Lois, the storm causes her to accidentally hit Shatner and Peter, killing Shatner and hospitalizing Peter. As her father recovers, in a full-body cast, he is forced to watch television, causing him to become addicted once again, much to his family's relief.

During the credits, Stewie tries (and fails) to make believe he is eating his broccoli by pouring it onto Brian's plate.

Production

"I Never Met the Dead Man" was the first episode of Family Guy for both writer Chris Sheridan and director Michael Dante DiMartino. For the first months of production, the writers shared one office lent to them by the King of the Hill production crew. As with the remaining first four episodes of the season, the title of the episode was derived from 1930s and 1940s radio programs, particularly the radio thriller anthology "Suspense", which featured several elements pertaining to death and murder. This convention was later dropped following the fourth episode of the season. In addition to the regular cast, actor Erik Estrada, writer and animator Butch Hartman, actor Aaron Lustig, actor Joey Slotnick and voice actor Frank Welker guest starred in the episode. Recurring guest voice actress Lori Alan also made minor appearances. The episode originally aired on April 11, 1999, nearly three months after the series premiere.

Reception

Reviews for the episode were generally favorable. A 2008 review of the episode by Ahsan Haque of IGN was positive, calling the storyline involving Stewie "elaborate [and] creative." He gave the episode a perfect score of ten, calling it one of the most "memorable" episodes in the entire series. Haque went on to note that "the tightly woven and hilarious storyline, combined with a constant barrage of cleverly inserted random jokes, and some truly unique imagery help make this episode one of the finest in the series. This is Family Guy at its best, and definitely sets a very high bar for animated comedy." Robin Pierson of The TV Critic rated the episode a 70 out of 100, making it the highest-rated episode of Family Guy on the site. Pierson described the episode as "A really fun twenty two minutes of television. There are so many jokes to enjoy and they are more focussed than the pilot," in particular praising the Fast Animals, Slow Children sequence.

In 2008, Haque later listed Stewie's plan to freeze broccoli crops as number one on his list of "Stewie's Top 10 Most Diabolical Evil Plans" and placed Peter's idea to pretend the world is a television program by attaching a cardboard cutout of a television set around his waist in sixth place on his list of "Peter Griffin's Top 10 Craziest Ideas".