The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire

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“The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire”
Family Guy episode

Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 5
Guest stars	Emeril Lagasse
Written by	Patrick Henry and Mike Henry
Directed by	James Purdum
Production no.	4ACX08
Original airdate	June 12, 2005
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List of Family Guy episodes

"The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire" is an episode of Family Guy. The storyline of this episode actually lampoons Desperate Housewives, also the working title for it too was parody of the show, which was Desperate People.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Peter invites his friends on board his fishing boat for a party at sea. An intoxicated Brian makes an awkward pass at Meg, who is horrified. While Quagmire is fishing, he catches a fish that lands in Loretta Brown's shirt. She invites him to reach in and grab it, which he does after a moment of hesitation. While Quagmire's hand is between her breasts, Cleveland approaches and mentions the snacks Peter has supplied, serenely saying hello to Glenn before walking away. After the fish is finally extracted, Loretta propositions Quagmire (to his amazed confusion). During a game of charades, Joe falls overboard and nearly drowns while attempting to portray "Natalie Wood." His life is saved by Peter's two Portuguese employees, who rescue Joe in a fishing net, pull him aboard, and perform CPR. Because no one in the family knew what to do in an emergency, Lois insists that they take CPR classes. Peter almost instantly has his CPR card revoked for inappropriate behavior (i.e. taking off peoples' pants to see if they soiled themselves).

While Peter ponders taking the CPR course again, he and Brian hear screams coming from Cleveland's house. They rush in to find Loretta having sex on the couch with a white man who has a tattoo on his buttocks. Embarrassed, they leave without seeing the man's face, although Quagmire raises his head from the sofa immediately afterwards.

They decide that the last thing in the world they should do is tell anyone about this. So after doing everything in the world in one day, they tell Lois, the Swansons and Quagmire that Loretta is having an affair. Peter volunteers to tell Cleveland, since he has experience with delivering bad news (in a barbershop-style group performing musical diagnoses for terminally ill patients). Meeting Cleveland at the Drunken Clam with Brian, Peter delivers the news in a typically overly-detailed fashion.

When Cleveland calmly questions Loretta over the affair, she angrily responds that she needs a real man. Cleveland responds in his usual mild-mannered way, even apologizing, and Loretta kicks him out of the house in disgust. The Griffins invite him to stay in their house. Lois claims Cleveland doesn't seem affected by the fact that his wife has kicked him out of the house AND cheated on him at all. Peter suggests that what Cleveland needs is a "revenge lay" and decides to ask Quagmire for advice. Quagmire is working out in revealing leopard-skin briefs when Peter and Brian arrive. They instantly recognize the tattoo on his butt and realize that Glenn was Loretta's partner. Despite Quagmire's pleas, Peter and Brian immediately tell Cleveland but are surprised when he shows almost no reaction.

Lois tells Cleveland that Loretta wants him to express his feelings: that women sometimes want men to be strong and stand up for them. She becomes aroused at her own motivational speech, drops her pants and asks Peter to spank her. Brian, apparently also lost in the moment, smacks her butt instead. After a moment of awkward silence, Peter tries to get his friend to feel some passion by taking him to a wrestling match, but it affects Peter much more than Cleveland. He then puts on a Quagmire mask and molests Brian (unwillingly wearing a Loretta mask). This method finally yields results; Cleveland becomes enraged and vows to kill Quagmire.

Peter realizes that he has gone too far and tries to protect Glenn by hiding him at Mayor Adam West's mansion. West's lunacy soon proves too much for even Quagmire, who returns home and calls Cleveland to apologize. Cleveland appears and chases Quagmire around his house wielding a baseball bat. When he finally has Glenn at his mercy cowering on the lawn, Cleveland realizes that he is unable to hurt another living person, no matter how badly they have hurt him. Peter tricks Loretta into seeing Cleveland (by saying that Lois needs an intervention), but instead of reconciling, the couple angrily agree to divorce.

Cleveland and Quagmire apologize to each other and, at Glenn's insistence, take out their aggressions on each other in a boxing ring.

[edit] Notes

Adam West's cat Bootsy was previous mentioned in "Ready, Willing, and Disabled."
The Browns' divorce is one of the few alterations to the status quo of Family Guy to have a permanent effect past the episode in which it originated.
Though Cleveland and Loretta have a son, Cleveland Jr., neither his existence nor his fate because of the divorce is mentioned in this episode (in the commentary on the DVD version of this episode, the commentators do mention this error).
On the DVD commetary of this episode, the main reason why the writers chose to remove Loretta from the series was revealed. Loretta's voice actor, Alex Borstein (who also voices Lois and various other female characters), was apparently tired of doing Loretta's voice, so the writers went one step ahead and had Loretta removed from the series. The commentary also reveals that she wasn't very interesting, rather she was there for the sake of being Cleveland's wife, so the writers also used that as a reason to get rid of her.
The Region 1 DVD version of the episode censors the term "nuts" (which was used when aired on the FOX Network ), yet it has an uncensored audio option to reveal the term.
The awkward pass Brian makes at Meg foreshadows their short-lived and creepy relationship portrayed in the episode "Barely Legal".
Brian suggests that Meg is 17 years old in this episode, but in "Peter's Two Dads," Meg celebrates her 17th birthday.
Lois pressures Peter to take CPR lessons because "no one knew what to do when Joe was drowning" yet in Blind Ambition Quagmire (unknowingly) revives a woman in a dressing room.

[edit] Cultural References

The Hindenpeter

This episode features a recurring joke parodying superhero vehicles such as the Batmobile. Peter boldly shouts "To the Petercopter!"; he then crashes a customized helicopter into Joe's yard. The joke is repeated with the "Hindenpeter," which, like the German zeppelin the Hindenburg crashes into Joe's house, something which is met with the scream from Joe of "How can you afford these things?"
When he leaves Mayor West's protection, Quagmire is given a Banana to protect himself with. This is in reference to Monty Python's Self Defense Against Fresh Fruit skit from Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different.
In a flashback, Stewie encounters Swedish female golfer Annika Sörenstam and looks up her skirt, playing to a rumor that Annika is actually a man.
While the Griffins and friends are playing charades, Joe falls off the boat and begins to drown, Peter guesses actress Natalie Wood, who died in a drowning accident. When Joe is revived, he tells Peter that Natalie Wood was the correct answer.
A cutaway shows Peter repainting the famous Sistine Chapel, with a portrait of actor/wrestler André the Giant, a reference to the André the Giant Has a Posse street art campaign. He explains that this "would be a little hipper, ... [to] bring back ... those boys you scared away,” a reference to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
Peter says the CPR dummy is “hard, jagged and tastes like alcohol—just like kissing Faye Dunaway,” an actress known for playing coarse characters.
The flashback in which Quagmire must “fess-up to the nation” parodies President Bill Clinton’s 1999 admission of guilt in the Lewinsky scandal.
Arbitrarily, Peter asks Cleveland about a scene in 1980s Superman II in which Superman uses a “cellophane S” to hinder Non.
To soothe Cleveland, Peter plays an acoustic version of the distinctly non-sentimental B-52's song "Rock Lobster."
A flashback shows Peter in the audience of Crossing Over with John Edward, a show in which Edward supposedly speaks to audience member’s dead relatives.
A transition between two scenes imitates the transitions in the animated series Transformers, in which the Autobot and Decepticon symbols alternate as the show moves between scenes showing one group and scenes showing the other. In this case, the faces are that of Peter and Quagmire. On the DVD commentary for this episode, the creators reveal that they had originally wanted to use the actual insignia of both factions, but were unable to achieve the rights.
Peter takes Cleveland to a wrestling match, featuring “Macho Man” Randy Savage, known for provoking audiences.
When Cleveland is working out, Rocky's coach Mickey Goldmill (Burgess Meredith) from the 1976 film Rocky appears. The ending scene where Cleveland and Quagmire face off in a boxing ring is a parody of the final scene of the 1982 sequel Rocky III between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed.
In a flashback, Quagmire and Cleveland imitate the Festrunk brothers, the "two wild and crazy guys" (Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin) from the 1970s Saturday Night Live episodes. Peter appears dressed as Beldar Conehead, another Aykroyd SNL character from that era.
Emperor Palpatine, from Star Wars Episodes V and VI, urges Cleveland to "let the hatred flow through" him, which was exactly said by Emperor Palpatine to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
Although Kicked in the Nuts is described as a TV show, it is in fact an Internet website, co-created by Mike Henry, who voices Cleveland Brown. The site is mentioned in the DVD commentary as the inspiration for the scene.
When Peter has a flashback where he is "reading while intoxicated", he is reading the novel Johnny Tremain.