Sibling Rivalry (Family Guy episode)

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“Sibling Rivalry”
Family Guy episode

Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 22
Guest stars	Wallace Shawn
Written by	Cherry Chevapravatdumrong
Directed by	Dan Povenmire
Production no.	4ACX24
Original airdate	March 26, 2006
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"I Take Thee Quagmire"	"Deep Throats"
List of Family Guy episodes

"Sibling Rivalry" is an episode from season 4 of FOX animated television series Family Guy. Guest starring Wallace Shawn as the voice of Bertram.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

After a pregnancy scare, Peter reluctantly agrees to get a vasectomy, but before the surgery, he goes to donate his sperm in case he and Lois want another baby. However, while donating his sperm, he accidentally knocks a large rack of samples over and replaces them himself so that he won't get in trouble. One of the recipients of his sperm are a lesbian couple, who give birth to Stewie's half-brother, Bertram, who appeared in the episode "Emission Impossible".

After the vasectomy, Peter's sex drive becomes nonexistent. Lois channels her sexual frustration into eating and she becomes fat. Peter ridicules her for the weight gain, but after they inadvertently have sex Peter's interest is renewed (claiming it to be the hottest sex they've had yet) and things heat back up, until her unhealthy eating habits get the best of her. She suffers a heart attack, and during the surgery the doctor removes the fat (to get to her heart) and return her to normal.

Meanwhile, Stewie's half-brother and archrival Bertram confronts him and they declare an all-out war for control over the playground. A confrontation between Stewie's stealth fighters and Bertram's helicopter gunships is inconclusive. Bertram resorts to biological warfare, infecting Stewie with chicken pox.

Stewie infiltrates Bertram's camp and engages him in a swordfight. (Similar to the one in The Princess Bride.) After a long fight, Stewie finally prevails, disarming Bertram. Later in the night, Stewie and Christopher Moltisanti suspiciously dig a hole - which is later revealed to be for planting a young tree. Stewie then reveals that Bertram ran off.

[edit] Notes

Stewie's sperm brother, Bertram from the episode "Emission Impossible", is finally born and returns in this episode. Stewie refers to the events of the previous episode as "our microscopic encounter."
The barbershop quartet from "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire" also returns singing The Vasectomy Song.
This is the second episode in a row where Brian expresses his sexual desire for Lois, this time to Peter: When Peter asks Brian if he would have sex with Lois, he says, "Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I would do everything to her, I don't care what she looks like. I would wreck that chick." Peter then comments with, "Well, you are a trooper."
The harmonious spoken-word segment of the vasectomy song (the one that mentions the woman with high beams under a white T-shirt and the sexual harassment seminar) is comprised of a single sentence which lasts for roughly sixty seconds.
Peter appears to have a fat fetish in this episode (which is only discovered after inadvertently having sex with the fat Lois), but on "Chitty Chitty Death Bang", one of Peter's T-shirts reads, "No Fat Chicks". Also on "A Fish Out of Water", Peter rejects Quagmire's idea to whore himself out to fat chicks in order to pay off the loan for the boat, and in "The Fat Guy Strangler", Peter's "Fat Pride" group's sign said "No Fat Chicks"
The barbershop quartet mentions Peter's sexual harassment charges from "I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar".
Peter says Lois' "elbow cleavage" resembles a schwa, which is a letter used in phonics with the shape Ə.
In Sibling Rivalry, Stewie refers to his brother as Bertram, even though they last met when he was a nameless sperm.
The bass of the barbershop quartet momentarily turns red-haired during the song.
Meg's gym teacher (the one who told the girls in the locker room to "take it off, get in the shower, and bounce around for me!" in "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter") returns on the show.
In the scene where Lois is waiting for Peter after the Funny Car race, there is a man standing behind her Funny Car that looks like Spike Lee from the episode "Lethal Weapons" in which Peter says "brothers and sisters fighting is as natural as white man's dialogue in a Spike Lee movie", leading to a cutaway parodying Lee’s movie Do the Right Thing.

[edit] DVD Exclusive Scenes

After the Vasectomy Song in the TV version, it cuts to the scene where Peter is at the Drunken Clam, grousing about his upcoming vasectomy. The DVD version has an extra scene where Peter challenges Lois to a funny car race (using real funny cars that Cleveland had when he was married to Lorretta, but now that Lorretta divorced him, Cleveland doesn't want them anymore) to Fenway Park in Boston where the loser gets a vasectomy (or in Lois's case, a hysterectomy). Peter almost makes it, but gets distracted by a duck boat ride and goes there instead of to Fenway. When he arrives and finds Lois at Fenway Park, he says, "Well, it looks like I'm a man with no sperm. But I'll always be a man with no sperm who once had a wonderful day."
Another cut scene (this time altered because of Standards and Practices) can be found on the deleted scenes collection on the Region 1 DVD where Peter tells the sperm bank receptionist that he's here to "banish a 'white Russian' from my 'Kremlin'," and the sperm bank receptionist tells Peter that he doesn't have to use innuendo in a sperm bank, to which Peter says, "Okay, where do I splooge?" The altered version on TV and DVD shows the receptionist telling Peter to sit down, and Peter tells her that he warmed himself up in the car and the receptionist arranges it so that Peter can donate sperm in one of the freezers.

[edit] Cultural references

When Stewie first arrives at the park, he goes to play on the jungle gym only to be confronted by a little boy. He remarks, "Hey, where'd you get the Pete Rose hair cut?" He then knees the boy in the crotch.
Stewie presses his face into Lois' chest and remarks, "You're like those memory foam mattresses. Look, there's my face!"
A cutaway shows Lee Harvey Oswald defending President John F. Kennedy from a gunman on the grassy knoll. Oswald loads his sniper rifle and says he will become an American hero for saving JFK. This is a play on several conspiracy theories regarding the JFK Assassination.
For their sexual role-playing, Peter uses the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. While Lois claims to be a private schoolgirl who needs to be spanked, he claims he is a Paladin with 18 charisma and 97 hit points who has a Helm of Disintegration and does 1d4 (one roll of a 4 sided die) damage as his half-elf mage wields his +5 Holy Avenger. This may be a play on a famous quote in the bash.org's Top 100-200 quote database.
When naming his kids, Peter mentions the kids from various shows that are currently airing on Nick at Nite, including Family Matters and The Brady Bunch (in reality, Family Matters has never aired as part of the Nick at Nite lineup), then Growing Pains. When Brian mentions this, Peter begins naming Street Fighter II characters, specifically Zangief (although Peter pronounces the name "Zang-GEEF", the correct pronunciation being "ZAN-gi-ef"), Chun-Li, Blanka, E. Honda, and Guile. Brian again points out this fact, after which Peter names various colors. Despite all of this, Peter never mentions Meg as one of his children.
When infiltrating Bertram's H.Q. Stewie's clothing and maneuvers are reminiscent of the movie Rambo: First Blood Part II.
Sauron, the villain from The Lord of the Rings is shown as The Eye of Sauron in a scene where he is trying to find his lost contact lens.
At the playground, Stewie's giving orders and quotes a flophouse resident in the Blues Brothers, "Did ya get me my Cheez Whiz, boy?" as a man who looks like Dan Aykroyd from the movie throws him his Cheez Whiz.
Stewie quotes Maximus from Gladiator: "At my signal, unleash hell."
After recovering from the chicken pox, Stewie returns to the playground to confront Bertram. As Stewie approaches his tent, Bertram quotes Darth Vader from Star Wars: "I sense something, a presence I've not felt since..."
A cutaway scene features Peter in a jail surrounded by inmates who force him to strip, squeeze his boobs together, and sing the chorus from Kelis's 2004 hit "Milkshake". This is possibly an homage to the scene after the credits in the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story in which Ben Stiller does the same thing in his fatsuit (According to Seth MacFarlane on the DVD commentary, Peter was supposed to be nude and pushing his breasts from underneath instead of at the sides, but the censors objected).
The helicopters flown by Bertram and his army may resemble the G.I. Joe Dragonfly XH-1; however, this may not be intentional as the XH-1 was simply modelled after the real-world AH-1 Cobra. Stewie's army's planes flown are similar to the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. The scene may also be a reference to the movie Rambo III, as Bertram has a similar headset to the general of the Russian forces.
Parodying George W. Bush and the Iraq War, Stewie says "We've got to fight him over there at the swingset, so we don't have to fight him here at the sandbox." He also comments on his lack of an exit strategy.
The sword fight is a parody of the sword fight in The Princess Bride. Many of the moves are similar or the same to moves in the film between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts. Wallace Shawn, the actor who voiced Bertram in this episode had a lead role in The Princess Bride, playing the Sicilian outlaw, Vizzini. His distinctive voice is another reference to this film.
In one scene, Scrat from the movies Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown is shown trying to take a nut out of a side of a glacier, and Peter tells him off for trying to steal his nuts. Apart from Peter, the scene was animated in 3D, and Chris Wedge reprised his role as Scrat from the original movies. The episode originally aired the week before Ice Age: The Meltdown opened. Fox aired promotions for the movie throughout the evening.
Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos helps Stewie plant a tree.
During the scene right before Lois and Peter have sex, Peter is watching Morgan Freeman in a fictional program called "The Narrarator", making fun of Morgan Freeman's voice (and probably his being typecast in narrator roles as of late).