List of Peter Griffin's jobs

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This list of Peter Griffin's jobs lists the jobs Peter Griffin, the main fictional character in the American animated television series Family Guy, has had over the course of the Family Guy television series.

Contents

[edit] Long-term jobs held

For a fictional character in a comedy series, his most important jobs are those that affect the continuity of the show. Thus, Peter's job one summer in the 1970s, or 1980s as seen in "Meet the Quagmires", as a towel boy at Cherrywood is important because there he met Lois Pewterschmidt, his future wife (as seen in flashbacks in the episodes "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater" and "Death Lives").

In or before 1977, Peter started working at the Happy Go-Lucky Toy factory. Flashbacks in "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea" imply that his employment there was continuous through 1984 to the "present day," which is after the time frame of the first episode of the series. There were interruptions in Peter's employment there during the first two seasons of the show but he always returned (so it's possible there were also interruptions before). He was promoted to head of toy development just moments before his boss Jonathan Weed's death, after which the factory was torn down in the episode "Mr. Saturday Knight". It does not appear possible that Peter will ever work there again. In that episode, Peter had three different jobs in the actual storyline: he was a human hand drier, a transvestite prostitute and a Renaissance faire jouster (the latter job constituted a significant portion of the episode).

Two weeks after being unemployed, Peter took up a job as a fisherman in the episode "A Fish Out of Water", and employed two Portuguese immigrants as deck hands. In the episode "The Perfect Castaway," Peter's boat was destroyed by a hurricane, ending his career.

From "Jungle Love" forward, Peter works at the Pawtucket Brewery. On his first day of work, he was demoted to the shipping department due to his massive drinking problem, with a "ward of the state" as his supervisor. In "Hell Comes to Quahog," everyone in the factory (including Peter, of course) was laid off from the brewery as several small businesses in Quahog were closed by the Superstore USA. In the later episode "Whistle While Your Wife Works," Peter was back at the brewery without any comment, and enlisted his wife's help to get him caught up with his work after accidentally blowing off all the fingers on his right hand.

The episode "Padre de Familia" may represent another interruption to Peter's employment at the brewery. When it was discovered Peter is an illegal immigrant, he is once again laid off and goes to work for Carter Pewterschmidt, and lives with illegal Mexican immigrants employed by Carter. At the end of that episode, Carter promises to pull strings to get Peter his U.S. citizenship, though Peter has not yet been shown returning to work at the brewery.

[edit] Jobs held for a single episode

These are jobs Peter held for a significant portion of only one episode:

In "Airport '07," Peter, Joe and Cleveland pretend to be flight attendants in a scheme to get Quagmire back his job as a pilot.

[edit] Jobs in cutaway gags

Listed in broadcast order of the episode in which the job was mentioned (listed by season):

[edit] Season 1

[edit] Season 2

[edit] Season 3

[edit] Season 4

[edit] Season 5

[edit] Season 6

Since many jobs seen in cutaway scenes referred to by Peter show him interacting with fictitious characters, or even not being human, and most show Peter at the same age as he appears in the show normally, it is not possible to establish continuity between these and his regular career story. It is unlikely that the writers intend these cutaways to be a strict part of his biography, since they are not usually mentioned again after being mentioned for one cutaway joke.

In a cutaway in "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows," Peter attended JonBenét Ramsey's funeral promised to make it his "life's work ... [to] find her killer, or killers." However, he appears to have followed Mr. Ramsey's request to drop the issue.

[edit] Jobs not affecting continuity

Peter became his own bartender in "Mind Over Murder," but Stewie went back in time to the beginning of the events of the episode and changed history; as such, Peter's time as a bartender is not part of the show's general logic. In "Da Boom", Peter was Mayor of New Quahog in the aftermath of a Y2K nuclear apocalypse. However, since it appears to be a hallucination of Victoria Principal, and since that part of the episode is not relevant to continuity, neither is Peter's job in that episode. And in "Family Guy Viewer Mail #1," Peter appears as a wealthy co-stockbroker with Quagmire, both of whom gave up on women when they were children. Likewise, this does not effect continuity as it takes place in an alternate Little Rascals-style universe.

Blurring the distinction between fiction and the fiction in the show-within-a-show, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story is book-ended by segments about the premiere party attended by Peter Griffin, who essentially plays "himself" in the show and the movie. In answer to Tricia Takanawa's question as to what jobs he's had between the series cancellation and revival, three flashbacks show Peter as a Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, a firefighter and an astronaut. In the first two of those jobs Peter thought he "could just go in the suit, like the astronauts," thus explaining why he chose to be an astronaut; of course, he ignores a fellow astonaut's warnings of not to open up his suit to "go," and ends up floating aimlessly through space.


[edit] References