“Family Guy” Season 7 Episode 11 Recap: Not All Dogs Go To Heaven

In the words of Brian, “Ah, the annual Quahog Star Trek convention — where once a year, sci fi buffs take their lips off the barrel of a loaded gun and spend half a day adjusting their eyes to sunlight.” Since Peter was kicked out of last year’s convention for insulting Shatner, he brings the whole reluctant family this time. Stewie buys blueprints of the transporter, professes his love of Picard over Kirk, and attends the cast Q&A session in which the only questions people ask are about buildup on household sponges, skin conditions, and low pressure in artesian wells. Which Stewie thinks is horse@#$%.

Unfortunately for Meg, someone at the convention has mumps, and since no one bothered to immunize her against it, she gets it, forcing Peter to attend to her dressed in an old-timey deep-sea getup since he never got vaccinated, either. While bedridden and unable to do anything but watch an old tv that only gets one channel, Meg finds Kirk Cameron’s God show and becomes a Bible-thumpin’ Christian in no time at all thanks to his plays on her low self-esteem and family misfortunes. Her newfound faith irritates Brian the atheist and inspires Peter to ask God for the cheat codes to “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out.”

Meanwhile, in Stewie’s room, the transporter is com-plete, and after an unfortunate trial run involving Quagmire, Stewie successfully beams the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation into his room. The cast is a bickering bunch, and Denise Crosby survives less than a minute, but Stewie can’t wait to spend the day hanging out with his heroes and asking them all the questions he wants (Stewie: “Hey, did you hook up with Whoopi Goldberg on the show?” Patrick Stewart: “Oh, all the time.”)

Stewie steals Cleveland’s van and takes the cast to McDonald’s for lunch, but Marina doesn’t eat fast food, Jonathan wants a Shamrock shake in September, Patrick wants breakfast at 3pm, Michael wants a McDLT (“I’m just saying, they have all the ingredients for a McDLT…”), Wil wants one of everything, Brent wants McNuggets and LeVar just wants to be able to take off his visor. It’s like having a van full of five year olds. Then he takes them bowling, and Patrick doesn’t want to wear bowling shoes, no one wants their real names on the scoreboard, Brent has to take Michael to the bathroom …

Back at the house, Meg enlists the help of Kirk Cameron’s younger brother from Growing Pains to tell Brian about Jesus, but that guy’s only interested in getting some Sudafed, for which Gumby-like Alan Thicke chastises him. Meg decides that the only way to get Brian to convert is to expose his atheism to the media. Once the news gets hold of the story and Brian is believed by all to be worse than Hitler, he’s cast out of society and unable even to get a drink at the bars. It’s the lack of booze that pushes him to the brink, and he tells Meg he’s decided to believe in God so she’ll drive him to the liquor store and get him some of “God’s genuine, cold-filtered grace.” On the way home, Meg tells Brian that now they have to do God’s work: burn books that offend God. Brian can’t take it (or fake it) anymore and uses Meg’s low self-esteem and family misfortunes to get her to doubt God again, suggesting to her that whatever the truth out there really is, it’s bound to be even cooler than we think.

Pan out all the way to the end of the cosmos, and the truth is that we’re all part of a lampshade in the bedroom of Rob Lowe and Adam West.

Stewie gets everyone back onto the transporter pad after having taken them to a carnival (Patrick has 5 prize tickets left and is disappointed that he and LeVar won’t be able to split custody of a fuzzy pencil topper). He lectures them about what a crap bunch of people they are and how they’ve ruined Star Trek for him, and then sends them off on their merry way.

I thought the Meg/Brian storyline got way too much airtime, and that the hilarious Star Trek plot should’ve gotten the whole half hour. So in my head I’m splitting them into two episodes and only counting the Trek one. Which rocked.

Highlights:

• Every interaction between Stewie and the cast

• Whil Wheaton

• Stewie farting in Peter’s deep-sea suit and everything that happened because of it

• God as Flash Gordon

• Was Brian growling “The Right Stuff”?

• The Tasha Yarr joke

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