The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire
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“The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire” is a season four episode of the animated series Family Guy. The storyline of this episode lampoons Desperate Housewives; its working title was "Desperate People." This episode has Loretta cheating on Cleveland due to his "lack of passion" and "not being a real man."
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[edit] Plot summary
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" in her last moments. 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 (Quagmire). 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 (went to Italy, Disneyland, United Kingdom, Hawaii etc.), they tell Lois, the Swansons and Quagmire that Loretta is having an affair. Peter volunteers to tell Cleveland, since he had experience with delivering bad news (he was in a barbershop quartet 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 he ends up leaving the house without an angry word. Feeling responsible, Peter invites him to stay in their house. Lois claims Cleveland doesn't seem affected by the fact that his wife 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 Quagmire 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. Peter then tries to get his friend to feel some passion by taking him to a wrestling match featuring Randy Savage, but it affects Peter much more than Cleveland. He then puts on a Quagmire mask and molests Brian (who is 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 Quagmire by hiding him at Mayor 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 Quagmire at his mercy cowering on the lawn (and also by seeing Meg, Chris and Lois looking on in horror - Stewie still seems indifferent to it all, of course), 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 agree to divorce.
Cleveland and Quagmire apologize to each other and, at Quagmire's insistence, take out their remaining aggressions on each other in a boxing ring (in a parody of the ending to Rocky III).
[edit] Cleveland's Family
- 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 DVD commentary of this episode, the commentators do mention this error).
- On the DVD commentary 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.
[edit] Controversy
The "You Have AIDS" sequence, in which Peter and a barbershop quartet dance in classic musical fashion around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS, singing about his diagnosis, drew protests from several AIDS service organizations.[1] According to the DVD commentary, the song was meant to show how Peter would deliver bad news in the "best way possible". Also according to the DVD commentary, the commentators say that the song is meant to be tasteless, because that's the joke.
[edit] Censorship
- When Peter gets kicked in the groin by the oranged-haired host of Kicked in the Nuts (an internet website), the host’s mention of the word “nuts” (when he tells Peter and Lois the name of the show) was bleeped out on the FOX airing and on the censored track of the Region 1 DVD set. The Cartoon Network and TBS airings and the DVD’s uncensored audio track have the word intact.
- Syndication cuts the scene where the Portugese boat workers say they peed in the punch, as well as Bruce's intro and outro speeches at the CPR class.
[edit] Cultural references
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This article or section contains too many minor or trivial fictional references. Mere trivia, or references unimportant to the overall plot of a work of fiction, should be deleted. See also what Wikipedia is. |
- This episode features a recurring joke parodying superhero vehicles such as the Batmobile. Peter boldly shouts “To the Petercopter!”; he then accidentally crashes a customized helicopter into Joe’s yard. The joke is repeated with the “Hindenpeter,” which crashes into Joe’s house, the similar fate of the LZ 129 Hindenburg.
- In a flashback, Stewie encounters Swedish female golfer Annika Sörenstam, ultimately accusing her of being male.
- 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. (Both Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy and Frank Shepard Fairey, who started the street art campaign, attended RISD.) 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.
- Brian and Peter parody Lassie alerting the humans to danger when they hear Loretta screaming.
- Peter says the CPR dummy is “hard, jagged and tastes like alcohol—just like kissing Faye Dunaway."
- At the start of the wrestling match, Randy Savage berates the locals. Peter, unable to take his rage out on the wrestler himself, punches a child and shouts, "Take that, Macho Man Randy Savage! Ya jerk!"
- Peter’s description of Loretta’s affair consists mostly of the word “Bam” spoken repeatedly. After a while, he asks Bamm-Bamm Rubble from The Flintstones to take over, who then passes it on to Emeril Lagasse who finishes with his trademark “Bam!”
- 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 1980's 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 members’ 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 insignias of both factions, but were unable to acquire the rights.
- 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.
- Emperor Palpatine, from Star Wars Episodes V and VI, urges Cleveland to “let the hate flow through” him.
- In a flashback, an intoxicated Peter reads the novel Johnny Tremain.
- Cleveland eats spinach in a parody of "Popeye the Sailor", vowing to kill Quagmire after watching Peter's reenactment of Loretta's affair.
- Peter brings Quagmire over to Mayor Adam West's house to be safe from Cleveland. Mayor West guards Quagmire as he goes to sleep, but warns not to make him laugh (for he is forbidden to). But, by himself, Adam laughs uncontrollably after thinking about an episode of Growing Pains with the character Richard Milhous "Boner" Stabone (he laughs about the nickname "Boner").
- The ending is a parody of the ending in Rocky III. Said Seth MacFarlane on the commentary, "We all love Rocky III."
- When everyone is playing charades on the boat, Peter mentions Stretch Cunningham, a recurring character in the 1970s sitcom All in the Family.
