| "The Big Bang Theory" | |||
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| Family Guy episode | |||
Stewie and Brian trying to save Leonardo da Vinci from Bertram. |
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| Episode no. | Season 9 Episode 16 |
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| Directed by | Dominic Polcino | ||
| Written by | David A. Goodman | ||
| Production code | 8ACX18 | ||
| Original air date | May 8, 2011 | ||
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| Family Guy (season 9) List of Family Guy episodes |
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"The Big Bang Theory" is the sixteenth episode of the ninth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It aired on Fox in the United States on May 8, 2011.[1] This episode follows Stewie and Brian on their quest to stop Stewie's half-brother Bertram from going back in time to the Renaissance period and killing Leonardo da Vinci, who is a part of Stewie's ancestry, in order to prevent Stewie's existence.
The episode was written by David A. Goodman and directed by Dominic Polcino.
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After failing to make a good comeback joke against Brian, Stewie goes back in time to redo it, before continually messing around with Brian. Eventually, Brian catches him inside the time machine. In fighting over its controls, they are accidentally transported out of the space-time continuum, where the laws of physics do not apply and where the return pad cannot get them home. Stewie decides to take a risky effort to overload his return pad to bounce them back into the space-time continuum. Stewie later determines that he was the cause of the Big Bang, because the background radiation that created the universe matches the signature of his return pad all due to the temporal causality loop.
When Stewie obtains plutonium to power the return pad, Bertram learns of the time machine and sneaks into the Griffin house to kill Stewie's ancestor in order to prevent him from being born. Unfortunately, as Stewie and Brian discover, by preventing the former from being born, then Stewie would not have been able to start the Big Bang, thereby creating a paradox that begins to wipe everything from existence. Brian and Stewie go back to fifteen minutes before Bertram arrives to stop him from killing Stewie's ancestor, revealed to be Leonardo da Vinci. Stewie guesses that given that Bertram and he share the same DNA, he must have come this far back to eliminate Stewie without affecting his own existence. After a vigorous fight, Bertram has all three of them at crossbow point. Despite being warned that he could destroy all existence, Bertram does not care and shoots da Vinci with a crossbow. In rage, Stewie shoots Bertram in the head and chest with the same crossbow, killing him.
Despite the fact that da Vinci is dead, the universe is still existing. Stewie then concludes that he must be his own ancestor. He sends Brian back to the present, where a letter from the Vatican arrives, detailing that Stewie has buried himself in a cryogenic tube underneath the Griffin household. Once he is unearthed and thawed, Stewie informs Brian he put his DNA into a syringe and injected it into da Vinci's girlfriend. Stewie brings back a candle from da Vinci's time, but Brian would rather have had him bring back one of da Vinci's original notebooks, surprised at Stewie.
"The Big Bang Theory" was originally intended to air as the seventeenth episode of the ninth season of Family Guy, airing a week after the second part of a fictional crossover event among American Dad!, The Cleveland Show, and Family Guy.[1] However just two days before its planned airing, it was announced by the executive of the entertainment division of the Fox Broadcasting Company that the event was pushed back until the following week, due to a series of tornadoes that killed nearly 300 people in the Southern United States.[2][3][4][5][6]
Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club graded the episode a B, stating "I've been down on Family Guy recently for experimenting a little bit too much with morality and form, but tonight's episode was the kind that I think it still does well. It's not as good as it was pre-cancellation, but there's a pleasant weirdness to it that makes me think that this is the way Family Guy should be. It's not excellent, but it's more than good enough".[7]
| Preceded by Brothers & Sisters |
Family Guy (season 9) | Succeeded by Foreign Affairs |