I Never Met the Dead Man

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“I Never Met the Dead Man”
Family Guy episode

Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 2
Guest stars	Daniel Stern , Frank Welker , Erik Estrada
Written by	Chris Sheridan
Directed by	Michael Dante DiMartino
Production no.	1ACX02
Original airdate	April 11, 1999
Episode chronology
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"Death Has a Shadow"	"Chitty Chitty Death Bang"
List of Family Guy episodes

"I Never Met the Dead Man" is the second episode of the FOX animated television series Family Guy.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Lois is annoyed that Peter spends more time watching TV than with the family. She suggests that instead of sitting in front of the tv all day, Peter should spend some time teaching Meg how to drive so that she'll pass her driver's test. Peter grudgingly agrees, but gives Meg lousy driving tips that she follows during her road test, causing her to fail. On their way home from DMV, Peter gets distracted and crashes the car into a main cable TV transmitter for the town of Quahog, knocking out reception for the whole town. Meanwhile, Stewie devises a plan to get out of eating the broccoli that he so despises: he intends to build a weather-altering machine that will freeze broccoli crops everywhere.

Peter blames Meg for the town-wide cable outage and bribes her to go along with the lie by promising her a new car. Meanwhile, Peter suffers without his precious TV to comfort him. He finally decides to strap a TV cutout to himself so that his whole world appears to be a television show. When Meg can no longer deal with the public scorn, she rats Peter out as the one really responsible for Quahog's TV-less existence, causing the town to turn on him instead.

Stewie decides to use the satellite dish Peter dragged home.

Lois saves Peter's neck by giving a compelling speech to the community about how TV keeps us all from enjoying one another and from other fulfilling pursuits, too. Having persuaded even Peter, he soon takes things to the other extreme, dragging the family on one activity after another. When the family can no longer keep up with him, Peter goes off with buddy William Shatner. Stewie's weather machine is now fully functional, causing a huge rainstorm. Peter and Shatner head home in the downpour just as Lois is taking Meg out to practice her driving. In the storm, Meg accidentally hits Shatner with the car, killing him. As Peter recovers at the hospital in a body cast after being run over by Meg, he is forced to watch TV, which transforms him back into the TV lover he used to be.

[edit] Cultural references

Before the opening titles, Stewie plays with, and shoots, a talking Sesame Street toy telephone with Ernie's voice. Stewie demands that he be put through to the Pentagon.
Peter watches an episode of Star Trek on TV and mentions Uhura.
When Peter walks outside with his fake TV harness, he pretends different groups of people are on a certain network or show. He sees some women talking at a cafe which represents Lifetime, an elderly couple for CBS, black men playing basketball for UPN, and Meg's school representing 90210.
When Brian accuses Peter of not being able to "quit" candy, the show cuts to a parody of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Peter takes the place of Violet Beauregarde.
In an NYPD Blue bit, Andy Sipowicz shows a suspect his buttocks in order to get him to talk.
Daniel Stern does a Wonder Years-style voice over for Meg.
Peter has a Wizard of Oz-inspired dream, seeing ALF, Gilligan's Island, the robot from Lost in Space, and I Dream of Jeannie, who turns into Samantha Stephens from Bewitched. In his sleep, he mutters "Must See TV!"
A fictional television show, called Scooby-Doo Murder Files, is shown on a bar TV.
Sunny, the mascot for Kellogg's Raisin Bran, dumps two scoops of giant raisins over the town, crushing a car and setting off alarms.
At a festival which Peter and William Shatner attend, a Hitler spoof runs a "German Sausage" booth. He overtakes one booth to his left, labeled "Polish Sausage" and replaces the sign with "German Sausage", much like how Hitler overtook Poland in World War II. The next booth is "Czech Weiners", but it is not shown whether or not the Hitler spoof overtakes it.
In his last seconds of life, Shatner spoofs the famous Star Trek-related phrase, "Beam me up, Scotty," with "Beam me up, God."
In the French-language dub, Peter's comment about the Germans becomes a reference to the Asterix comics as well. He says "Ils sont fous, ces Allemands" (These Germans are crazy), which is a homage to how Asterix and Obelix often say "Ils sont fous, ces (name of foreign culture being featured)".

[edit] Goofs

Despite having rabbit ears on their TV, the Griffins get all their channels via cable. In the DVD commentary, MacFarlane explains that this is on purpose to distinguish a TV from a microwave or stove.

[edit] References

Callaghan, Steve. "I Never Met the Dead Man." Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1-3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 18 - 21.
Delarte, Alonso. "Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 1." Bob's Poetry Magazine March 2005: 8 - 9. http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02Mr.pdf