Family Guy – Season Ten

For the season premiere of Family Guy, the episode took on a very familiar sitcom theme – winning the lottery. Stick with us before shunning this episode completely.

It starts out as any other “about to strike it rich” episode as the Griffin family have to budget more as they have a hard time keeping up with the bills, even going as far as to not get Brian groomed. Of course, in typical Peter Griffin fashion, he decides the only way to solve their financial problems is to win the lottery, so he buys well over 200,000 tickets and has the family go through each ticket for the winning numbers, which are announced by a girl who is probably denser than Brian’s ex-girlfriend, Jillian.

Soon after, a montage with a play-by-play background song (chosen by Brian after a this-or-that decision) of going through the tickets occurs which Peter then reveals that those tickets were all fake. Peter drops a box of real tickets and Brian finds the winning lottery ticket. The family then strikes it rich and, of course, they lose it all after spending it on lavish excess.

During this time, Quagmire and Joe ask for some money for a penis enlargement pill company that a relative needs start-up money for, and also cash to pay Stevie Nicks to play for Joe’s Wife's birthday. Peter naturally gives them the money, but soon the power of money to goes to his head and he commands that they do a bunch of crazy acts to show their gratitude for Peter’s generosity. Of course, the two are highly irritated and completely ignore Peter.

After losing their money, Peter resolves that winning the lottery (again) will resolve their problem, only to win the lottery and lose their money yet again. In an inevitable apology to Quagmire and Joe after losing it all twice, Quagmire gives Peter his percentage of the money from the start-up Peter had written a check for. In the end, the family moves back into their house, but the episode ends in their depressed of not being rich anymore and they all look out at each window of the house.

It seems that the writers for this episode of Family Guy wanted to make an original spin on the age-old “rags-to-riches-to-rags,” but it falls short of the mark and ends up being quite a lame episode with very few hilarious moments. It tries too hard to keep to being generic Family Guy and having a sort of outlandish theme for the episode at the same time.

With this, you may want to overlook this episode completely. As far as season premieres go, this one falls short of greatness and does nothing to really excite of for the coming season.