'Family Guy' Season 10, Episode 2 'Seahorse Seashell Party' Recap

If last night's episode of "Family Guy" seemed a little out of place, that's because it was. In fact, this whole hurricane cross-over event was supposed to happen last year, but with the storms in the South, it would have been in pretty bad taste at the time.

That's why, after a fairly light and standard episode last week, we were suddenly faced with an at times serious and at times terrifying episode last night. Yeah, I'll say it. I was a little bit terrified.

In this bottle episode, the Griffins are stuck in the house because of the storm, and unfortunately for them they can't get a TV signal either (darned satellite TV!). That means they're left to their own amusements: they try charades (which Peter sucks at), Peter makes "dad noises," and they attempt to play "fingerbang" but get annoyed when Meg chimes in.

Tensions finally boil over, though, when Peter starts humming (quite accurately) the chase music from "Indiana Jones." Meg can't take it any more, and blows up at him. That gets her rolling, and she eventually targets Lois, Peter and Chris one by one, pointing out their shortcomings and chastising them for ganging up on her when they're so much less responsible than she is.

But eventually Meg realizes her true place in this show--er, family. She's the "lightning rod"... she's there to take the negativity and dysfunction so that it doesn't destroy the family. How else could the Griffins operate? They're pretty messed up, man.

And speaking of messed up, Brian spends this whole time on magic mushrooms. That's one of the ways you can tell this is a season 9 episode: much of it is devoted to a sequence that doesn't have many jokes or plot points, and it's particularly gruesome (akin to last year's Christmas episode).

Brian's bad trip is truly horrifying, and at times downright scary. You have to hand it to the animators for putting that sequence together. It was pretty imaginative, and really nicely constructed, even though it made me cringe a few times. Maybe, as Stewie points out at the end, this episode is here to convince us all to NEVER take shrooms. I'm convinced, anyway. I certainly don't want to end up cutting off my ear to prevent WWII, and Stewie with a human mouth was one of the creepier things I've seen.

Cut-aways of the week:

-Seeing Lady Gaga naked

-The return of G.I. Jose, teaching the kids about head wounds

-"Going at each other like an Italian guy and a black woman" National Geographic special, with "flock of Jews."

-Fighting broccoli and brussel sprout