Da Boom

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“Da Boom”
Family Guy episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 1
Guest stars None
Written by Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan
Directed by Bob Jacques
Production no. 2ACX06
Original airdate December 26, 1999
Episode chronology
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"The King is Dead" "Brian in Love"
List of Family Guy episodes

"Da Boom" is an episode from the second season of the FOX animated television series Family Guy. Since the episode directly contradicts every postmillenial episode, it is almost never considered canon. This is explained at the end of the episode, when it is revealed to be a dream by Pamela Ewing (played by Victoria Principal) from TV series Dallas.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

A man in a chicken costume triggers a lengthy flashback of Peter fighting a giant chicken who gave him an expired coupon. The costumed man warns Peter about the dangers of Y2K. Peter heeds the warning and locks his family up in a bomb shelter on December 31, 1999. A nuclear holocaust occurs at the stroke of midnight: Joe Swanson is partially embedded in his own driveway and Kevin gets vaporized. Glenn Quagmire and Cleveland Brown merge into one body (Clevemire/Quagland), and Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa is eaten by Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons. Only the Griffins, due to being in radiation suits, are free from mutations or abnormalities.

When Peter consumes their emergency food rations in a few minutes (which should have lasted an entire year), the family travels to Natick, Massachusetts, in hopes that the Twinkie factory survived (Peter learned Twinkies can survive a Nuclear Holocaust while watching a A&E special entitled "Twinkee the Kid"). On the way, Stewie is exposed to nuclear waste and later mutates into an octopus. Upon their arrival at Natick, they establish a town, dubbed New Quahog, but Peter quickly mismanages it into chaos. It is around this time that Stewie begins to lay eggs.

The citizens eventually rebel when Peter decides they need guns and uses their irrigation system to harvest the metal for the weapons. Peter is eventually kicked out of town to go somewhere else, and his family chooses to follow him. Just as the townspeople have began burning all the guns, Stewie's spawn hatch, and begin to kill the citizens. One town character remarks to another about whether or not he remembers the other day when he asked him what the definition of irony was, where upon he is attacked by one of the hatchlings unable to use the weapons they just destroyed. Meanwhile, the Griffin family walks out of town deciding where they should go next: a Carvel factory in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The episode ends in a live-action parody of a famous episode of Dallas, where Pam Ewing wakes to find her husband Bobby in the shower. She tells him about the episode, which was apparently a dream.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Notes

  • With the exception of Peter's flashback concerning the giant chicken (the giant chicken returns for another round of combat in the Season 4 episode "Blind Ambition"), this episode has no bearing on the continuity of Family Guy,
  • Twinkies are spelled "Twinkees" throughout the episode.
  • In Natick, Massachusetts, there was a factory, owned by Continental Bakeries, that made Twinkies. It was torn down in 2004 and its location is currently being made into an extension to the Natick Mall.
  • This was the first episode to credit Mila Kunis for the voice of Meg Griffin.

[edit] Cultural references

  • The title of the episode is based on a FOX ad campaign at the time, where "Da Boom" was supposed to be Jamaican slang for the best, or cool. (From episode guide)
  • At the beginning, Stewie makes reference to wearing Huggies diapers.
  • Peter asks Lois if she remembers when he was the third Hardy Boy, as a way to prove to her he was right about the apocalypse.
  • When Stewie breaks under the pressure of the Griffins' exodus, he says "Game over, man. Game over!" like the character 'Hudson' does in Aliens.
  • Randy Newman was parodied as a senile man at a piano singing about everything he sees. Newman was voiced by Will Sasso, who was reprising the character from a recurring MADtv sketch.
  • Awestruck by the Twinkie factory, Peter parodies the movie Contact, saying "No words... should have sent... a poet..."
  • Stewie, as an octopus, climbs onto the ceiling declaring he is Fred Astaire, the famous actor/dancer. Specifically, he is referring to "You're All The World To Me", one of Astaire's most famous dances, from the movie Royal Wedding. In it, a rotating room was used to enable Astaire to dance on the ceiling.
  • The end of the episode cuts away to Bobby and Pamela Ewing from the series Dallas (played by Patrick Duffy and Victoria Principal) in a live-action scene where Pamela is distraught about a dream she just had, which was the episode of Family Guy. Bobby responds by saying, "What's 'Family Guy'?" This scene is also a parody of the famous Dallas shower scene, where the entire previous season was ret-conned as a dream.

[edit] References

  • Callaghan, Steve. "Da Boom." Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1-3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 50 - 52.
  • Delarte, Alonso. "Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 2." Bob's Poetry Magazine May 2005: 8 - 10. http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02My.pdf

[edit] Goofs

  • When Brian walks down the stairs to get his gift that was supposed to be there, part of his head disappears.
Preceded by
"Holy Crap"
Family Guy Episodes Followed by
"Brian in Love"
In other languages