| "The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire" | |||
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| Family Guy episode | |||
Peter and Brian discover that Quagmire and Loretta are having an affair. |
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| Episode no. | Season 4 Episode 5 |
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| Directed by | James Purdum | ||
| Written by | Patrick Henry Mike Henry |
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| Production code | 4ACX08 | ||
| Original air date | June 12, 2005 | ||
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| Episode chronology | |||
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| Family Guy (season 4) List of Family Guy episodes |
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"The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire" is the fifth episode of the fourth season of the American animated television series Family Guy. This episode marks the final appearance of Loretta, until the season 7 episode, "Love, Blactually". In the episode, Cleveland's wife Loretta cheats on him with Quagmire, due to Cleveland's "lack of passion" and "not being a real man". With Cleveland separating from Loretta, this episode lays much of the foundation for The Cleveland Show. This episode is rated TV-14 DLS.
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Peter invites his friends on his fishing boat for a party at sea. While Quagmire is fishing, he catches a fish that lands in Loretta's shirt. She invites him to reach in and grab it, which after a moment of hesitation he does. While Quagmire's hand is between her breasts, Cleveland approaches and mentions the snacks Peter has supplied, serenely saying hello to Quagmire before walking away. After the fish is finally extracted, Loretta propositions Quagmire (to his amazement). During a game of charades, Joe falls overboard and nearly drowns while attempting to portray "Natalie Wood" in her last moments, and is revived by a member of the crew. 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 (he unnecessarily performs CPR on two men who were in a minor car accident and takes off their 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. At first Peter believes Cleveland is piebald, but Brian says Loretta was committing adultery with a white man who has a tattoo on his left buttock. Embarrassed, they leave without seeing the man’s face, although Quagmire raises his head from the sofa immediately afterward. They decide that the last thing in the world they should do is tell anyone about it. So after doing everything in the world in one day, 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 about 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 is worried that Cleveland does not seem upset by the fact that his wife cheated on him, or kicked him out of the house 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 a tattoo of his phone number on his butt and realize that Quagmire was Loretta's partner. Despite Quagmire's pleas, Peter and Brian immediately tell Cleveland, but they and Lois are surprised when he accepts it with little emotion.
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 forces Brian (who is unwillingly wearing a Loretta mask) on the ground. This method finally yields results: Cleveland becomes enraged and vows to kill Quagmire.
Peter realizes that his plan has worked too well and tries to protect Quagmire by hiding him at Mayor West's mansion. West's lunacy soon proves too much even for Quagmire and he returns home and calls Cleveland to apologize. Cleveland appears and chases Quagmire around his house wielding a baseball bat. Despite finally having Quagmire cowering and at his mercy, and the encouragement of Emperor Palpatine, 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 angrily agree to get a divorce, with Cleveland saying that he may not be perfect, but he deserves better than Loretta.
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).
According to the DVD commentary for this episode, Loretta was written out of Family Guy because her voice actor, Alex Borstein (who also voices Lois and other female characters), was apparently tired of voicing Loretta. Therefore, the writers went one step ahead and had her removed from the series.
With Fox in second place among adults 18 to 49 years old, this episode gained a total of 8.35 million viewers.[3] Kim Voynar of TV Squad wrote a favorable review, saying "This episode of Family Guy was just chock-full of the tasteless and tacky moments that make the show so popular."[1]
The "You Have AIDS" sequence, in which Peter and a barbershop quartet dance, in musical revue fashion, around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS, delivering the patient's diagnosis in song, drew protests from several AIDS service organizations.[4][5] 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.
| Preceded by Don't Make Me Over |
Family Guy (season 4) | Succeeded by Petarded |