The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz”
Family Guy episode

Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 18
Guest stars	Charles Durning, Tom Bosley, Marion Ross, Gary Cole, Sherman Hemsley, Paula Abdul
Written by	Danny Smith
Directed by	James Purdum
Production no.	4ACX22
Original airdate	December 18, 2005
Episode chronology
← Previous	Next →
"The Fat Guy Strangler"	"Brian Sings and Swings"
List of Family Guy episodes

"The Father, the Son, and the Holy Fonz" is an episode from season 4 of FOX animated television series Family Guy. Guest starring Charles Durning as Francis Griffin, Tom Bosley as Howard Cunningham, Marion Ross as Marion Cunningham, Gary Cole as Bill Lumbergh, Sherman Hemsley as himself, and Paula Abdul as herself.

The title of the episode is a combined reference to Roman Catholic liturgy and Happy Days. The episode deals with Peter's religious beliefs. The episode title is also a parody of a common Catholic invocation often said with the Sign of the cross: In The name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen..

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Francis Griffin, Peter's father, who is very devout in the Catholic faith, visits Quahog and insists that Stewie be baptized Catholic. Francis and Peter go to St. Philip's, where the priest refuses to baptize Stewie because he claims the holy water is tainted. Francis does not believe this and pushes Stewie onto the baptismal font. Stewie quickly becomes sick, so Peter and Lois take him to the hospital, where a doctor quickly and correctly diagnoses Stewie's condition as exposure to tainted holy water. Stewie is quarantined in a germ-free environment. Lois asks Peter what his religious beliefs are, sending him on a quest to find a religion. At first he tries Mormonism, until he found out that Mormons can't drink alcohol, then he tries Jehovah's Witnesses, until he finds someone actually interested in hearing what he has to say — caught flatfooted, Peter recites the prologue to Quantum Leap with Jesus in the role of time traveller Sam Beckett. Then he tries many others such as Hinduism, until Francis tells Peter he should look in his heart, so Peter starts his own religion: the First United Church of the Fonz. This new religion borrows surface elements from Catholicism but uses Happy Days episodes as its sacred texts. To the Griffins' surprise, many people show up for the first worship service.

Brian, who's been playing jokes on Stewie, does not like the idea of Peter being a religious leader. Brian joins forces with Francis to find other fad religions to dissipate the congregation of the First United Church of the Fonz. Lois cheers Peter up by telling him that if even just one person embraced the Fonz's values of friendship, it was all worthwhile. This person turns out to be his father.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Notes

In the episode "The Son Also Draws", Peter went on a vision quest and his spirit guide was Fonzie.
The ending credits runs just like the Happy Days credits, the format and the text are identical, in an animated form.
It is one of two episodes of Family Guy to be rated TV-MA on Cartoon Network, primarily because of its irreverent take on religion, its depictions of nudity, and scenes of Stewie being abused while in the plastic bubble. On FOX, this is rated TV-14.
On the DVD commentary, one of the cast members, while discussing the Vaudville Duo, said, "God rest their souls", accidentally hinting of their death in "Saving Private Brian", which aired just nine days before the DVDs were released.

According to the DVD commentary, the Fonz statue hanging at the Church of the Fonz was supposed to be on a cross similar to how Jesus is shown on a crucifix, but FOX Standards and Practices rejected it.

[edit] Censorship

The FOX version of this episode cuts Stewie's line, "Nothing says, 'Eat up' like a bleeding, half-naked Jew nailed to a piece of wood" as Peter's dad is hanging a crucifix above the kitchen door, due to religious sensitivities. Adult Swim and the DVD version air this part uncut.

[edit] Cultural references

The opening scene shows the Griffin family watching Aquaman on television portrayed as a lazy, unfair ruler who abuses his powers to command sea-life by giving them trivial errands.
In the opening sequence, Peter summons Bill Lumbergh from the film Office Space to tell Lois she needs to "not complain about this" and then, "and if you could sit at the kids' table, that'd be great."
Stewie tells the audience to go watch Desperate Housewives on ABC for five seconds to see how ugly the women are. He then makes a comment about actress Marcia Cross's face looking like someone stretching silly-putty over their knee. The first half-hour of Desperate Housewives's timeslot competes with Family Guy on FOX and, in most of Canada, Global. Coincidently, Marcia Cross is on screen for that entire five second flip.
Brian torments Stewie by forcing him to watch The View. In this version, the women act very much like farm hens, clucking and such as they sit. Star Jones Reynolds even lays an egg. Coincidentally, there was a MADtv sketch in season 11 where it portrayed the female hosts of The View as clucking, cackling hens (with castmember Michael McDonald as a farmer who kills one of them when she doesn't produce eggs for him). This is in part of the criticism of the show in which many complain that there is too much talking.
Peter watches Jaws 5: Fire Island, where everybody seems to be a stereotypical homosexual. Mike Henry, using his voice for the performance artist, does the voice of the great white shark. Additionally, this might depict the well known idea that Jaws 4 was considered an absolutely horrible movie.
Peter dances with Paula Abdul in footage of the video for Opposites Attract. He is superimposed over the animated role of MC Skat Kat, and sings an altered version of the original song's lyrics, mainly replacing the line "Opposites Attract" with "I'm dressed like a cat". According to the DVD commentary, Paula Abdul had to come in and rerecord the song since the technical staff couldn't separate her singing and replace MC Skat Kat's lines with Peter's.
Peter describes Jesus going through a journey similar to Quantum Leap.
Stewie bathes with Kathy Bates in a parody of a scene in About Schmidt.
When Francis baptizes Stewie "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost", Peter adds in "and Space Ghost". Space Ghost was the protagonist of both an old Hanna-Barbera television show, and a parody late-night talk show from the mid 90s.
When the doctor tells Lois and Peter of Stewie's condition, Lois asks if Stewie "will have to go through what John Travolta did in that movie". Peter fearfully asks if he'll have to take Stewie's face off, like in Face/Off, in which the protagonist and antagonist traded faces. Lois then states that she was referring to The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
The vaudeville duo sings "Fatty's in a little jam, dead girl, dead girl" to the tune of Camptown Races, and refers to silent movie comedian Fatty Arbuckle and accusations that he raped and murdered budding starlet Virginia Rappe.
After Peter converts to Mormonism, he says that one of his new wives is the "Kramer" of his collection, a reference to Seinfeld.
A man tells his wife to imagine "a happy healthy baby boy at play. Now put him in a magic bubble and release him into the universe." When Stewie, in a bubble, rolls by, the man tells his wife to imagine Lindsay Lohan naked and doing a backwards crab walk. Later on, Lohan appears at Peter's door doing just that (in an alternate scene on the volume 4 DVD, the person at the door was the Hindu guru who tells Peter that the dot on his head was from the laser sighting on a sniper rifle).
Stewie announces that he has had a horrible morning rolling around in his bubble, with the flashback imitating the Pinball Number Count sequence featured on Sesame Street sung by the Pointer Sisters.
Kirk Cameron (who did not provide his voice in this episode) appears at the First United Church of The Fonz to convert some of the members of Peter's church to Christianity. In reality, the former Growing Pains star is an evangelical Christian himself.
When watching television, Peter listens to television announcers that describe comedies in a light and airy tone, then switch to dark and menacing for dramas. ABC in the 1980s and 1990s was known for doing this (though other channels today carry on this tradition).
Peter incorporates a number of elements from Fonzie in his religion. Peter tells the congregation to "sit on it", and then "let us 'Eeeyy'", two of Fonzie's catch phrases. There is also a motorcycle in the church, as well as a jukebox, a reference to Fonzie's trademark move of pounding his hand on a jukebox to automatically make it play his song. Peter also refers to the "mystery" of Richie's older brother (who was never seen again after the first episode of Happy Days) and reads a lesson to the congregation from "Potsie's Letter to the Tuscaderos."
Quagmire's line "Giggity-goo-gaa!" parodies the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah".
After everyone leaves Peter's religion, Peter, Brian, and Francis talk about their disgust with Madonna's career, attitude, clothing choice, father issues, and the men she has dated.
After Stewie is released from his bubble, he says to Brian that he and his friends at Cobra Kai will take him down, referring to the name of the gang of bullies in The Karate Kid.
The ending sequence of Family Guy mirrors that of the opening for Happy Days and uses the song "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets, the opener for Happy Days' seasons 1 and 2. (According to the DVD commentary, they used the Bill Haley song because they were refused the rights to the "Happy Days" title theme song.)
In a flashback, Peter buys a Aaron Neville megaphone.
In a deleted scene found on the DVD, Peter says to his followers, "There is no god but Fonzie, and Richie is his prophet", parodying a common Islamic phrase, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet".
In a deleted scene on the Region 4 volume 4 DVD release, Stewie talks to Brian about the Anime series Ojamajo Doremi, thinking that it's like a kids' version of Sex and the City. This is possibly a reference to a lolicon-esque comment made about the show by Al Kahn.

[edit] Goofs

Francis says that he thought that Peter "could ever embarrass him more, in a church" than than when he did at his cousin Mary's wedding (where Peter shouted "Genital warts!" when the priest asks if anyone objected to the union to speak now or forever hold their peace), but Francis wasn't shown in church during the flashback.