‘Family Guy’ Season 22, Episode 1: ‘Fertilized Megg’ Wastes A Meaningful Story With Offensive Humor

Julius Wu, Dominic Bianchi and James Purdum‘s Family Guy season 22, episode 1: “Fertilized Megg” centers around one of the series’ main protagonists, Meg Griffin (voiced by Mila Kunis), agreeing to give birth to the surrogate child of the series’ LGBTQ couple, Bruce and Jeffrey (both voiced by Mike Henry).

After months of burdening her family with her needs, Meg eventually gives birth to Bruce and Jeffrey’s baby, whom they name Liza Judy Barbara. Upon worrying that they can’t handle the responsibility of raising a child, Bruce and Jeffrey allow Meg to take care of her for a few days, much to the dismay of her mother, Lois (voiced by Alex Borstein).

To this episode’s credit, the plot was executed well as it effectively showed the struggles of pregnancy while also ending with an insightful message of how a good parent can come from anywhere.

There were also plenty of good jokes in this episode such as one in the first few minutes where Peter bowls like Fred Flintstone, the main character of the series The Flintstones, mainly because of how random it was.

Additionally, the signature randomness of Dr. Hartman and his signature riffing made him a very enjoyable character, just as he was in his previous appearances on the show.

But in spite of the potential that this episode had to be a possible return to form for a series that has been spiraling downhill for over a decade, it still could not help but continue the series’ streak of tasteless, and oftentimes obnoxious, humor.

One joke that seemed extremely tasteless was when Meg’s father, Peter (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), responded to the news of Meg being pregnant by telling her that he wanted to continue this conversation at the top of the stairs.

Peter’s response was then followed by a commercial jingle for Peter’s “top of the stairs” line in which an announcer gives the idea that it is not an abortion if it is an accident.

While not every joke is tasteless, there are still ones that go on for so long that they inevitably irritate.

For instance, there was one scene where one of Peter’s friends, Joe Swanson (voiced by Patrick Warburton), lists the real names of several celebrities like Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fMr1qBCTPk

The whole goal of the joke is to show how annoying Swanson’s knowledge of famous people-related fun facts is to Peter’s other friends, Glenn Quagmire (voiced by MacFarlane) and Cleveland Brown (voiced by Mike Henry).

Much like Quagmire and Brown, however, the only way that viewers can respond to this joke is by groaning in annoyance and questioning the overall significant purpose of these fun facts.

“Fertilized Megg” had a great deal of potential to be one of the most emotionally impactful and funny episodes that Family Guy has had to offer in recent years, but it still fell flat by choosing to be just as annoyingly unfunny as the series’ recent episodes, thereby making it a colossal disappointment to the series’ viewers – and average television viewers.