8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter”
Family Guy episode
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 8
Guest stars	Joanna Garcia
Written by	Patrick Meighan
Directed by	Greg Colton
Production no.	4ACX11
Original airdate	July 10, 2005
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"Brian the Bachelor"	"Breaking out Is Hard to Do"
List of Family Guy episodes

"8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter" is an episode from the fourth season of the FOX animated television series Family Guy which guest-starred Joanna Garcia as Stewie's babysitter, Liddane. The title of the episode is a pun on the TV show 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, whose title comes from W. Bruce Cameron's book of the same name.

[edit] Plot summary

When Peter goes to the pharmacy to buy condoms, he realizes he has forgotten his wallet. Mort Goldman, the pharmacist, offers to open a tab for him; Peter quickly begins spending unnecessarily. (He buys 8 cases of syrup of ipecac so he can hold a vomiting contest with Brian, Chris and Stewie; however, it was a complete failure.) Soon Mort calls in Peter's debt of $34,000. In desperation, Peter seizes upon a picture of Mort's son Neil, who is infatuated with Meg. Peter offers to sell Meg to the Goldmans to settle the bill, offering a contract; Mort agrees, but everyone is shocked to discover that Neil has started dating another girl. Meg becomes unexpectedly jealous and hunts desperately for a boyfriend to make Neil jealous; she ends up settling for Jake Tucker, who only wants her to buy him things. She finally tells Neil that she wants to be his girlfriend and signs the original contract to prove her sincerity; the Goldmans quickly put her to work as a slave plowing a field in their front yard. Brian finds a clause in the contract stating that it is null and void if Neil cheats on Meg, so Peter convinces Lois to dress as Mystique and seduce him at a fake X-Men convention. Neil tells Meg that he only wants her to be with him if she wants to be with him, tears up the contract, and quickly reconciles with his previous girlfriend. Meg's relief quickly gives way to renewed jealousy.

Meg with Tom Tucker's son and Neil with his girl

Meanwhile, after Meg had complained that she was tired of babysitting Stewie while their parents went out, Lois interviews candidates for a new babysitter, including a couple of Portuguese fishermen (Santos and Pasqual, the two men Peter hired to help him fish), and a Gloop (from The Herculoids). Stewie instantly falls in love with Liddane, an attractive young applicant. Liddane already has a boyfriend, however, and in a jealous rage, Stewie clubs him with a tire iron and locks him in the trunk of Brian's car. When Liddane rejects Stewie's advances, he drugs her and tells Lois that she invited friends over and that they were "smoking merry-jee-wanna and hero-ween! And they were all taking eczema and touching each other!" Lois fires Liddane, who departs tearfully after giving Stewie a mixtape. Stewie regrets his actions and pursues her, but she has disappeared. Weeks later, Stewie realizes that he forgot to release her boyfriend.

[edit] Notes

• Liddane is named after Liddane Sanders, the production controller of Family Guy and American Dad!. On the subtitles and closed captions when this episode is on, her name is spelt "LaDawn".
• In the joke in which Stewie makes a reference to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun dying together, it depicts the two "performing" suicide by means of drug ingestion. In reality, Hitler shot himself while Braun ingested a pill (although it is rumored that Hitler was taking a pill simultaneously).
• The mixtape Stewie got from Liddane is played during the last scene in "Whistle While Your Wife Works".
• In the last scene, Neil calls Cecilia after he voids the contract with Meg. However, if the viewer looks at the phone, it is actually upside-down (so the receiver is in Neil's ear, and the earpiece by the mouth). It is unclear whether this was intentional or a mistake by the artists. However, it is interesting to note that in "The Fat Guy Strangler", Carter Pewterschmidt has an angry conversation on the phone with Lois and is holding the phone the same way Neil does in this scene.
• At the end of the episode Peter mentions "Next week I run for mayor of Quahog, do I have what it takes?" No episode with this plot has aired as of yet. The upcoming "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One" is expected to have Lois running for the position.

[edit] Cultural references

• This is, according to the DVD commentary, the first episode of Family Guy to make a reference to The Simpsons (during the scene when Stewie goes on a rant when he finds out that the babysitter has a boyfriend). According to Seth MacFarlane, he does not have anything against The Simpsons, or Matt Groening.
• Peter makes several references to the product I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
• The scene in which Stewie tests his "teleportation pods" and merges with Rupert is a spoof of the 1958 movie The Fly.
• While stopping at Goldman’s Pharmacy, Peter imitates an Excedrin commercial and buys several copies of the fashion magazine Marie Claire, only to be disappointed by the physical appearance of actress Kathleen Turner.
• In a cutaway, Peter buys a "breakfast machine", which turns out to be a Rube Goldberg device which shoots him. The breakfast machine itself is similar to the breakfast machine featured in the film Pee Wee's Big Adventure. The Danny Elfman music used in the scene was adapted from said film.
• While interviewing potential babysitters, Lois interviews Gloop, a protoplasmic blob from The Herculoids. When she rejects him, Tundro, a triceratops-like creature from the show, shoots his signature energy rocks at her.
• The show parodied the 2004 crossover film Alien vs. Predator, which pitted the Xenomorphs from the Alien film series against the Predator of the Predator series, with a scene from "Kramer vs. Predator," pitting Dustin Hoffman's character from Kramer vs. Kramer character against a Predator. Dustin Hoffman's character did not win.
• Stewie rented the first season of Jiminy Glick, and fantasizes about being Glick interviewing Colin Farrell.

Lois Griffin dressed as Mystique tries to seduce Neil Goldman dressed as Wolverine.

• Stewie fantasizes Brian re-enacting the Matthew McConaughey's character Wooderson's line in Dazed and Confused in front of the pool hall: "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age."
• After Stewie kidnaps Jeremy and throws him in the back of Brian's car, he throws him his iPod so he can listen to The Strokes as he "gasps for air," although he mistakenly calls them "The Streaks" at first.
• In the episode’s final scene, the Griffins trick Neil to coming to a shady hotel by advertising an "X-Men convention". Neil arrives riding a Segway, dressed as Wolverine, and Lois dresses as Mystique to seduce him.
• When Stewie sees Liddane, he says that he was more exhilarated than when Brian took him to see Les Miserables. It then cuts to a theatre with the announcer telling everyone that Kirk Cameron would be playing Jean Valjean to Stewie's delight.