To Love and Die in Dixie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“To Live and Die in Dixie”
Family Guy episode
Episode no. Season 3
Episode 12
Guest stars Waylon Jennings
Written by Steve Callaghan
Directed by Dan Povenmire
Production no. 3ACX09
Original airdate November 15, 2001
Episode chronology
← Previous Next →
"Emission Impossible" "Screwed the Pooch"
List of Family Guy episodes

"To Live and Die in Dixie" is an episode of the third season of Family Guy. The title is from the chorus of the song "Dixie", the unofficial anthem of the U.S. South. In his last ever screen appearance, country music singer Waylon Jennings guest-starred as The Balladeer. This episode is also included in the "Freakin' Sweet Collection" "best of" DVD.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Chris gets a newspaper route to pay for a birthday gift for a girl he likes. At a convenience store, he witnesses a robbery and identifies the thief out of a lineup. When the thief escapes and swears revenge on Chris (shortly after he bangs his girlfriend), the family is placed in the Witness Protection Program. The Griffins are relocated to Bumblescum, a tiny town in the deep South. Peter becomes sheriff with Brian as his deputy, while Stewie joins a hillbilly jug band, and Chris meets Sam (played by Pepper Ann's Kathleen Wilhoite), a girl whom he mistakes for a boy.

Chris realizes his mistake after Sam kisses him, and they go on a date to a hootenanny (or hoedown, there is a fight over this, although they are interchangeable). The criminal tracks Chris down to Bumblescum but during the confrontation the criminal is shot by Sam's father.

Despite offending the town earlier when Peter corrected their Civil War reenactment, they still were willing to take care of their neighbors. With the criminal gone, the Griffins return to Quahog and Chris has to leave Sam behind.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Controversies

Many U.S. Southerners dislike the episode, saying it is too stereotypical, although the intention of the episode was to poke fun at common stereotypes of Southerners.[citation needed] The Southerners of the fictional town of Bumblescum openly condone incest ("I hope her brother don't already have dibs on her," a boy says about Meg), are intellectually lacking (a school boy cheats off a pig's test), become pregnant at an early age (a young girl tells Meg that she has a daughter), are technologically lacking (the ATM is a man with money in a cardboard box), and are very prejudiced. After Peter offends the townsfolk at an American Civil War reenactment, Brian distracts them by turning their attention to a "newly married interracial gay couple burning the American flag!" Peter also states later that "It doesn't matter where you're from. As long as we're all the same religion."

When the bank robber who has just escaped prison says "First, I'm gonna bang my girlfriend, then I'm gonna kill Chris Griffin!", Stewie remarks, "Can he really say bang my girlfriend on TV?", a jab at what the censors on network TV (or the FCC) can and can't allow in terms of language and content. Coincidentally, the FOX rerun of this episode bleeps out the "bang" in "bang my girlfriend".

[edit] Notes

  • The burglar looks like the Mass Media Murderer from "The Kiss Seen Around the World".
  • One season later, in The Fat Guy Strangler, Brian gets Peter back for having the window rolled up when Brian was trying to hop in the General Lee through the window by throwing a rock at him.
  • This episode marks the first appearance of Herbert, the Creepy Old Pedophile.
  • Lines Peter and Brian say while drunk ("Brian, you're drunk. Give me the keys.") are the same as those said by Stewie and Brian in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.
  • On some versions of the Family Guy season 3 DVD set, there is an animatic of an alternate scene with ALF. Instead of an E! True Hollywood Story about ALF, there was an actual episode where the Tanner family finds out that he's just a puppet. ALF also makes a cameo apparence in the episode, "I Never Met the Dead Man", when Peter dreams about a world without television that parodies Dorothy's dream trip to Oz in The Wizard of Oz.
  • On the DVD menu of the second disc of the Volume 2 Season 3 DVD boxed set (Region 1) the episode title is written as "To Live and Die in Dixie". On the back cover of the second disc's box though, the episode title is correctly written.
  • A recurring theme in the episode is a racoon which keeps popping out of unlikely places and attacking Peter. These include a TV, a refrigerator, the inside of Lois' shirt, and from Peter's sheriff's pistol.

[edit] Cultural references

  • The title is a reference to the 1985 crime film To Live and Die in L.A., and is also a reference to the song "Dixie": I wish I was in Dixie, hurrah, hurrah, in Dixieland I'll take my stand, to live and die in Dixie.
  • The plot of this episode is somewhat similar to the 1991 film, Cape Fear.
  • The pig in the classroom shares traits similar to Arnold Ziffel, the pig on the sitcom Green Acres, who also attended school.
  • Peter says that his first job was part of a folk music trio. A flashback shows that he used to be partnered with Simon and Garfunkel, and wanted to title "Mrs. Robinson" "Mrs. Fleckenstein" (One of the writers on Family Guy's staff is named Fleckenstein) and sing "parsley, sage, rosemary, and Lawry's Seasoning Salt" instead of "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" in "Scarborough Fair/Canticle." After Paul Simon criticizes his ideas, Peter says "Screw this, I’m goin' to 'Nam." This is another example of continuity being irrelevant in cutaway scenes, in "Brian Does Hollywood", an episode broadcast in 2000, Stewie says that Peter is 42. Mrs. Robinson was written around 1967, meaning he would have been 9 or 10 years old at the time, not in his twenties as portrayed. Furthering this point is that he looks exactly the same age as in flashbacks to the '70s.
  • Chris gives Barbara a bottle of Elizabeth Taylor's brand of perfume and says "I guess that means you'll smell like bourbon and vicodin," referring to the actress’s alleged substance abuse problems.
  • One of the criminals in the lineup at the beginning of the episode is Morpheus from The Matrix.
  • Peter chides Chris for not claiming that the robber of the convenience store was Celine Dion, calling the opportunity "our one chance to put that show-boating Canadian wench behind bars."
  • When Meg is in class, the students ask if she has "those talking pictures, flying machines and perfume for your armpit". This is referring to televisions, airplanes and deoderant or body spray.
  • The FBI agents are a reference to The Odd Couple. "We'll be watching your house together, even though he's a slovenly liberal and I'm a fastidious conservative," one of them says. "I smell a sitcom!" the other replies.
  • Jeff Foxworthy shows up (celebrity voice impersonated) inside the closet of the Griffins' new home.
  • Peter spots a "Crunch Berry," a variation of Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal beneath the refrigerator.
  • After plucking a banjo string, Stewie explains "Oh, I feel so deliciously white trash. Mommy, I want a mullet!" referring to the derided hair style stereotypically associated with poor, rural Whites.
  • A DJ on a country music station says "We just heard Merle Haggard with 'I Kissed My Sweetie with My Fist.'"
  • Soon after arriving in Bumblescum, Peter paints the family car to resemble the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard. After he and Brian race around, impersonating main characters Bo and Luke Duke, Peter suggests getting Chris and Meg to play the show's villains Boss Hogg and Enos Strate (who Peter mistakenly calls anus).
  • When Chris asks where do you go when you die, his friend says "I learnt at church if you're good you go to heaven, but if you're bad you go to a place where the dead believe they're still living and pray for death, but death won't come." and Chris thinks Hell is UPN, a now defunct television station that normally aired programming aimed towards African-Americans.
  • When Sam takes off her hat and overalls revealing she's a girl, a shirtless Chris sees her and covers his breasts, the same way a girl would cover her own if a guy were to catch her topless.
  • Peter confuses the "Mason-Dixon" in Mason-Dixon Line with Bosom Buddies actress Donna Dixon.
  • When Peter and Brian launch the car over a hay bale, a popular stunt on The Dukes of Hazzard, Waylon Jennings reprises his role as the show's narrator. Another parody of the show occurs when Brian tries to hop into the car through the window, another popular stunt on the show.
  • After an argument, one of the FBI agents staying at the Griffins house draws "boobs" on an Etch-A-Sketch toy, to which the other one says "Go ahead, they always come out square!".
  • After Lois says that she made dinner with Shake 'N' Bake, Stewie says "And I helped!" a line directly from Shake 'N' Bake commercials.
  • After Stewie plays a song on the banjo, he screams "I got blisters on me fingers!" which is what Ringo Starr screams at the end of The Beatles song "Helter Skelter".
  • A segue between scenes shows Buck Owens, host of Hee Haw, another popular television show that takes place in the rural south.
  • Sam compares Chris to a "skinny Garth Brooks," referring to the country singer’s apparent weight gain.
  • When the robber asks for the names of Peter and Brian, Peter claims he is "T. J. Hooker" and Brian is "McMillan and Wife," referring to two police dramas.
  • After the locals kill the thief on the dock, Peter says that all Southerners "suffer from the gum disease known as gingivitis," in the same manner as the voice on a 1990s commercial for Listerine, a dental hygiene product.
  • When Peter and Brian are being chased by the Civil War survivors one of them asks 'Has anyone seen my foot?' This is possibly a reference to a Jerky Boys skit in which Sol Rosenberg is selling Confederate memorabilia, one of the items being a Confederate foot. While this may seem far-fetched, keep in mind that Jerky Boy Johnny Brennan who voiced Sol Rosenberg is also the voice of Mort Goldman on this show.
  • After being kissed by Sam (while still under the impression that Sam is a boy) Chris remarks, "I haven't been this confused since the end of No Way Out!" It is then revealed that Chris' confusion refers to how Kevin Costner keeps getting work, and not the infamous twist at the end of the film.
  • This episode contains a humorous Southern version of a Civil War re-enactment, which plays off of real history, as Robert E. Lee was a teetotaller, while Ulysses S. Grant was forced to resign from the military in 1854 because of a drinking problem (he did not return until 1861).
  • This episode's plot set-up (the family having to relocate due to a criminal threatening to kill Chris after Chris gets him sent to jail) is very similar to that of the Simpsons episode "Cape Feare", which, in turn, parodied the film Cape Fear.

[edit] References


Preceded by
"Emission Impossible"		 Family Guy Episodes Followed by
"Screwed the Pooch"
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/o/_/To_Love_and_Die_in_Dixie_6077.html"