Baby Got Black

"Baby Got Black" is the eighteenth episode of the twelfth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the 228th episode overall. It aired on Fox in the United States on April 27, 2014, and is written by Kevin Biggins and Travis Bowe and directed by Brian Iles.^[1] In the episode, Chris falls in love with Jerome's daughter, Pam, much to her father's chagrin. When the two kids run away, Peter and Jerome team up to look for them.

Plot

At the Drunken Clam, Peter, Quagmire, and Joe hear a news story from Tom Tucker of a kid who dies trying to stay awake playing Halo all night. Afterwards, the guys wager each other over who can stay awake the longest. To pass the time, the guys prank call Cleveland Brown and Mort Goldman over their dead wives. Sixty two hours without sleep later, the guys start to hallucinate. Joe falls asleep first as Peter and Quagmire struggle to stay awake. The next morning, Lois comes over Quagmire's house and wakes Peter, Joe, and Quagmire up so that she can ask Peter if she can remove some episodes of iCarly from the TiVo. Peter and Quagmire review Quagmire's security camera footage and determine Peter won the bet. To celebrate, he takes the family out to eat.

When Chris goes to pick out a lobster, he bumps into his classmate Pam and her father Jerome. But when they part, Pam plants a steamy kiss on Chris. Chris later introduces Pam to the family as his girlfriend to their unease. Lois nervously notes she voted for Obama (once), and Peter is impressed that she is not fat. But at the Clam, Jerome forbids Pam from seeing Chris, and Peter accuses him of being racist, despite his objections. He invites Jerome and his daughter to dinner, but Jerome strongly resists any overtures of friendship, and Peter's attempt to convince him (in a musical number) that white people have done a lot of good only makes him angrier as he drags Pam away.

The next day, Chris mopes over Pam as he questions whether he will ever find anyone else and decides to go and confront Jerome. But Jerome later comes to Peter and tells him of finding a note that their kids have run away together. As they hide out in a motel, they try to figure out what to do, and Pam tells him to get undressed while she prepares herself as well in the bathroom. As Chris does the same thing, he finds Randy Quaid in one of the beds sleeping and urinating while talking about his movies. Chris admits his inexperience and Pam confesses hers as well. As Peter and Jerome cruise town, they're pulled over by a cop who harasses Jerome for no reason, and Peter becomes sympathetic to Jerome's having to go through racist shit like that all the time. Blowing off some steam, Jerome notes that most of his anger is in his protection of Pam and that he likes Peter. They arrive at the motel to find Chris and Pam making out. Jerome is angry and it seems that he's not going to listen to anyone, but after Pam sharply tells him that she will follow his advice and reject Chris solely because he's white—and Peter makes some broad racial comments when advising Chris to dump Pam—Jerome sighs and apologizes for overreacting, though both he and Peter are relieved that their kids didn't have sex with each other. When Randy Quaid makes another comment while in his bed, Peter and Jerome plan to kill Randy Quaid.

Reception

Eric Thurm of The A.V. Club gave the episode a D+, saying "“Baby Got Black” is the rare episode of the show that seems like it might have maybe had a tiny impulse to say something interesting, and falls totally and utterly flat, first because, well, it’s Family Guy, and second because it’s not very funny."^[2]

The episode received a 2.1 rating in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic and was watched by a total of 4.02 million people. This made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night, beating American Dad!, Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons.^[3]

References

• The plot description was adapted from Baby Got Black at Family Guy Wiki, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.