Brian Goes Back to College

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“Brian Goes Back To College ( A.K.A. Brian Goes Back To College and Stewie Goes With Him For Obvious Comedic Reasons)”
Family Guy episode

Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 15
Written by	Matt Fleckenstein
Directed by	Greg Colton
Production no.	4ACX18
Original airdate	November 13, 2005
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List of Family Guy episodes

"Brian Goes Back To College (and Stewie Goes With Him For Obvious Comedy Reasons)" is an episode from season 4 of FOX animated television series Family Guy.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Peter, Cleveland, Joe and Quagmire get dressed up as the protagonists from The A-Team to go to an 80's TV shows convention. The event is covered by Brian for a local newspaper. The editor of The New Yorker happens to read the paper, impressed by Brian's writing--and offers him a job. But when Brian admits he did not finish college, he is immediately fired.

Brian resolves to take the one class he needs to get his college degree. Stewie tags along with Brian, leaving Gary Coleman as his replacement at home. Brian stresses about his class while Stewie parties. Stewie edits one of Brian's papers, and Brian sees it as cheating. He doesn't like how Stewie did that, but quickly, Brian has second thoughts...

Meanwhile, spurred by winning the costume contest, Peter and friends decide to become a real A-Team. However, rather than solving the towns problems they end up causing havoc. The episode concludes with them achieving redemption by helping Brian get to his final exam on time. He fails it, but he is glad for managing to finally finish college, without cheating. His family tells him that he should have.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Trivia

The New Yorker eventually wrote a friendly response to this episode which parodied them. [1]
The beginning of this episode was used in the Animated version of the Internet comic, VG Cats. This can be found on boe entertainment.
The inclusion of Brown University in this episode is another hint at Quahog's similarities to the city of Providence, as Brown University is located in Providence.
Stewie begins to bug Brian about his novel in the same way he did (with the high pitched voice) in the episode "Brian the Bachelor," but Brian hits him with a book before he goes on for too long.
Continuing a normal tradition of Meg-bashing, after Stewie stops filming Brian because he didn't cry after getting fired, he goes to see what Meg is doing, sees her in her underwear, and starts to choke or possibly vomit.
The Stephen Hawking functionary who had been a fellow contestant in "Brian the Bachelor" (and was a contestant in the Special Olympics in Ready, Willing, and Disabled) has since married a fellow quadriplegic who also speaks with an electronic keyboard.
Immediately following the A-Team intro parody, Peter clutches his leg and exhales exactly as he did in "Wasted Talent", although he only makes that noise once instead of continuing.
According to DVD commentary, Stewie's "Amateur Gynecologist" T-shirt was originally supposed to read, "Free Mustache Rides", but it was objected by Standards and Practices.

[edit] Goofs

Murdock's name is misspelled as "Murdoch." This mistake is very common.
In the promos for this episode, Stewie's shirt (in the scene where he and Brian are at a booth and Brian regrets cheating on his homework) is a plain white T-shirt, but in the actual episode, the T-shirt reads, "Amateur Gynecologist".
Stewie raises his arm to Brian showing it smells, and said, "Tell me that's not epic!" This is not possible, because Stewie is technically a baby and puberty doesn't come until age 10-12.
Though Brian's experience in college suggests otherwise, it is impossible to fail a course at Brown University. The worst that could happen is he would receive a "no credit", which wouldn't even be recorded on his transcript. [2].

[edit] Cultural references

Peter and his friends impersonate the A-Team with Peter as "Hannibal" Smith, Quagmire as "Faceman" Peck, Joe as "Howling Mad" Murdock (misspelled "Murdoch" in the intro) and Cleveland as B.A. Baracus. Cleveland says, "I pity the fool," a catch phrase associated with Mr. T, the actor who played B.A. on the show, although the line actually originated from his character Clubber Lang, in the film Rocky III, not The A-Team, where he mostly restricted himself to calling people "fools."
The original A-Team opening went as follows:

"In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... THE A-TEAM".

For this episode, it was changed to:

"In 2005, a group of local misfits won a costume contest at an 80s TV convention. These men promptly returned home and drank some beer. Today they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... THE A-TEAM".

The A-Team spoof can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4d7PUsFr2M

At the convention, Peter mistakes Brian for Alf, the snouted, furry extraterrestrial of the sitcom of the same name. With this black tie, Brian says that he is actually impersonating Douglas Brackman from the drama L.A. Law.
Bill Cosby is seen leading a group of similarly dressed men in aerobics that imitate Cosby’s mannerisms.
The MC of the convention says that Alan Thicke, star of Growing Pains "will be up in a minute to answer your hate mail."
Stephen Hawking is parodied through-out, down to simulated sex with a fictional wife, called Helen. Hawking is taken in by Brian, who cheats on an assignment to stay in College.
Brian watches an episode of the sitcom The Facts of Life in which a masculine Jo asks mentor Mrs. Garrett if it's okay that her penis touched her vagina.
Small Wonder, a 1985-89 sci-fi sitcom, is referenced in this episode. When Peter and his friends visit the 80's television convention, a booth for Small Wonder is seen in the background. Tiffany Brissette is seen sitting in the booth, with a sign that says Tiffany "Vicki" Brissette. Tiffany played the main character of the series, a robot named Victoria "Vicki" Ann-Smith Lawson.
A sign says "In loving memory of Ubu", the mascot of UBU Productions which produced shows such as Family Ties.

"This spray is definitely not for me."

In a flashback, Peter tries "TAG Body Spray for Sick Cats". This parodies commercials for TAG, in which men simply spray TAG on themselves, and women flock to them. Peter has a similiar experience, only with sick cats instead of women.
A flashback shows Stewie performing at the 1969 Woodstock Festival where he tells the hippies not to smoke weed, and then begins to sing a song praising the establishment.
After he is fired from his job at The New Yorker, Brian encounters a "No Dogs Allowed" sign, hears a booming voice enforcing the rule and then lays on top of a doghouse. This parodies the Peanuts character Snoopy in the 1972 film Snoopy, Come Home.
Chris says he saw an after-school special about dropping out of college and that "it didn’t work out too well for Kristy McNichol. But then again, nothing did." McNichol, star of the 1970s drama Family, has been out of the spotlight. Family Guy made another joke about McNichol in the episode "Holy Crap."
A cutaway parodies the execution of King Louis XVI of France as a simple job firing.
Gary Coleman takes Stewie's place while he’s at Brown. Coleman combines his catch phrase with one of Stewie’s to form "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, vile woman?", because he owed Stewie one.
Actress Kelly McGillis hosts an educational video on college dating.
Stewie buys a poster of a work by Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. He mistakenly calls it "Crazy Stairs." Its actual title is Relativity.
When Stewie points out to Brian that "lots of people cheat", the scene cuts to Ashlee Simpson's infamous performance on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jude Law where she gets caught lip-synching and dances awkwardly before leaving the stage. The background music, however, is Paul Robeson performing "Ol' Man River" from the musical Show Boat.
Looking at the scoreboard when Brian and Stewie are at the Brown football game, you can see the opposing team to be "the Board of Education" a reference to the famous court case Brown v. Board of Education, which declared unconstitutional the segregation of public schools.
The scene where Stewie falls to the floor, legs twitching just within frame with the camera still running after seeing Meg undress through his video camera is reminiscent of the final scene in the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project.
Roger Williams Park is an actual park in Providence, Rhode Island, named after Rhode Island founder Roger Williams
Lois scares Brian with a Hoover vacuum cleaner. In Brian Does Hollywood, Lois mentions that "[Brian's] come a long way from getting scared by the vacuum cleaner," and in the season 2 episode Fore Father Brian is seen using a vacuum cleaner withont being scared of it.
The scene in which Brian and Stewie work out in preparation for Brian's final exam is a parody of Rocky Balboa's training session for his fight with Ivan Drago in the movie Rocky IV. Brian goes as far as to yell "DRAGO!" at the peak of the mountain, as Rocky did in the movie. This is the second Rocky reference in this episode. As in the film, the song in the background is "Heart's On Fire" by John Cafferty.
Peter complains that the recent Playboy pictorial of 1980s pop star Debbie Gibson came too late.
Stewie plays Ultimate at Brown— Brown's Ultimate team was the 2005 National Championship Team in US College Ultimate.