8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter

"8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter" is the eighth episode from the fourth season of the FOX animated series Family Guy which guest starred Joanna García as Stewie’s babysitter, Liddane. It was rated TV-14 for suggestive dialogue (D), offensive language (L), sexual content (S), and violence (V) in the United States.

Plot summary

When Peter goes to the pharmacy to buy condoms and some Excedrin, he realizes he has forgotten his wallet. Mort Goldman, the pharmacist, offers to open a tab for him. Peter quickly begins spending unnecessarily (misunderstanding the concept of a tab). For instance, he buys eight cases of ipecac so he can hold a vomiting contest with Brian, Chris, and Stewie; although Chris technically wins, all four continue to vomit explosively and violently in a scene lasting 56 seconds. Soon, Mort calls in Peter's debt of $34,000. In desperation, Peter seizes upon a picture of Mort's son Neil, who is infatuated with Meg. Peter offers to sell Meg to the Goldmans to settle the bill, offering a contract; Mort agrees, but everyone is shocked to discover that Neil has started dating another girl named Cecilia. Meg becomes unexpectedly jealous and hunts desperately for a boyfriend to make Neil jealous; she ends up settling for Jake Tucker, who only wants her to buy him some BB's. She finally tells Neil that she wants to be his girlfriend and signs the original contract to prove her sincerity; the Goldmans quickly put her to work as a slave, putting on Neil's pajamas and plowing a field in their front yard. Brian finds a clause in the contract stating that it is null and void if Neil cheats on Meg, so Peter convinces Lois to dress as Mystique and seduce him at a fake X-Men convention. Neil tells Meg that he only wants her to be with him if she wants to be with him, tears up the contract, and quickly reconciles with his previous girlfriend. Meg's relief quickly gives way to renewed jealousy.

Meanwhile, after Meg had complained that she was tired of babysitting Stewie while their parents went out, Lois interviews candidates for a new babysitter. Stewie instantly falls in love with Liddane, an attractive young applicant. Liddane already has a boyfriend named Jeremy, however, and in a jealous rage, Stewie clubs him with a tire iron, ties him up, duct tapes his mouth shut, and locks him in the trunk of Brian's car. After Liddane refuses to let Stewie touch her breast, he drugs her and tells Lois that she invited friends over and that they were "smoking merry-joo-wanna and hero-ween! And they were all taking ecstasy (which he calls eczema) and touching each other!". Lois fires Liddane, who departs after giving Stewie a mixtape. Stewie regrets his actions and pursues her, but she has disappeared. Two weeks later, Meg babysits Stewie again, then he realizes that he forgot to release Jeremy from Brian's trunk, and mildly assumes that he is dead, without much remorse.

Cultural references

The title of the episode is a play on the TV series 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter. The beginning of the episode, in which Stewie experiments with teleporation pods when he is fused with Rupert, is a reference to the 1986 film The Fly. When Stewie realizes Liddane has a boyfriend, he thought that he and Liddane would go all the way and die together, and be the Family Guy version of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun's suicide pact. A flashback shows Brian by the bowling alley, talking about how high school girls keep getting pretty and staying young. This is a reference to the movie Dazed and Confused, where Matthew McConaughey's character, David Wooderson says exactly the same thing. Meg goes on Everybody Loves Raymond to tell Neil she does not like him. When Lois interviews several people to apply for being Stewie's babysitter, one of them is Gloop from the 1967 show Herculoids. Tundro also comes in the house and starts shooting.^[1]

In a cutaway, Peter buys a "breakfast machine", which turns out to be a Heath Robinson contraption which shoots him. The breakfast machine itself is similar to the breakfast machine featured in the film Pee-wee's Big Adventure. When Liddane introduces Stewie to her boyfriend, Stewie gets jealous and furious and rants about Liddane's boyfriend, "with his damn Teva sandals, and his Skoal Bandits, and his Abercrombie & Fitch long-sleeved open-stitch crew neck henley, smoking his sticky buds out of a soda can while watching his favorite downloaded Simpsons episodes every night." Stewie calling out to Liddane after she has departed is a reference to Catherine Earnshaw calling for Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. When Stewie throws Liddane's boyfriend in the trunk of Brian's car, he throws in an iPod in the Trunk as well, so he can listen to The Strokes, the band Stewie mistakenly calls "The Streaks."

Production

The babysitter is named after Liddane Sanders, the production controller of Family Guy and American Dad!, according to the DVD commentary for this episode. Said commentary also states that this is the first episode of Family Guy to make a reference to The Simpsons.

Reception

This episode was the most-watched program on its original airdate among adults 18 to 49, with a viewership of 6.1 million.^[2]

References