Peter turns gay
The episode was written by. Upon learning that the effects of the gay gene may be permanent, she decides to make the best of things when Peter suddenly leaves her for a gay.
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When asked in a interview with TV Line if "Family Guy" was really phasing out the gay jokes, executive producer Alec Sulkin answered, "Kind of, yes. For instance, "The Simpsons" spurred a round of outrage in when Homer made a throwaway joke about no longer strangling his son Bart.
They've been shaped by the reality around us, so I think the show has to shift and evolve in a lot of different ways. Although this culture-wide debate over comedic boundaries usually centers around stand-up comedians, animated sitcoms often end up in the middle of it too.
The climate is different, the culture is different, and our views are different. " Family Gay " is the eighth episode in the seventh season of the American animated television series Family Guy. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 8, In the episode, to help pay off debt, Peter participates in a series of medical drug tests including one in which he is injected with an experimental gene that renders him gay.
One of the trickiest ongoing debates in the comedy business concerns how exactly to evolve with the times. If you look at a show from or and put it side by side with a show from orthey're going to have a few differences. One of the jokes here involves a conversion therapy camp counselor giving the peters baseball bats to beat up "Harry the Homosexual.
Executive producer Rich Appel added, "It's not us reacting and thinking, 'They won't let us [say certain things]. Meanwhile, there's the episode "Family Gay," where Peter turns gay for an episode. When the counselor yells at the gay campers to stop using the bats in that way, it's not just a cheap gay joke; it's also a scene where the gays triumph in the face of hatred, rubbing the counselor's face in the futility of his mission.
And yet, it's hard to get too mad at "Family Gay. The episode knows that most gay men aren't actually having ways most of the time, and it trusts its audience to understand the same. With Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis. For the most part "Family Gay" depicts gay people as silly but harmless, whereas the conversion camp counselor is depicted with genuine scorn.
The actual joke is that strangling your child wasn't considered socially acceptable in the '90s either, but some people interpreted it as a serious declaration from the show that it wouldn't do the gag anymore.
Family Gay: Directed by Brian Iles, James Purdum, Peter Shin. Times have changed," Homer says. Never mind that Homer was seen strangling Bart again just two episodes later. Lois is initially upset that Peter is now gay, but she warms up to the change when he begins exhibiting stereotypical gay behaviors like shopping for clothes and cooking muffins, only to reconsider her stance when Peter rejects her sexual advances.
Peter becomes temporarily gay after participating in a medical study. Like with the outrage over the supposed decline in cartoon child abuse on "The Simpsons," though, most of the backlash here came from people who don't watch the show regularly anymore; if they did, they'd know that the gay jokes on "Family Guy" have hardly stopped.
At least, that's my optimistic take on the scene's subtext. No, don't use gay bats like that either! But although it's easy to make fun of the faux-outrage over "Family Guy" going "woke," there was some truth to what Peter said. Some of the things we felt comfortable saying and joking about back then, we now understand is not acceptable.
Sure enough, the gay jokes of later-season "Family Guy" are a bit less crass than the gay jokes of early "Family Guy. The joke here is mostly that Lois sucks, and also that it's ridiculous she'd be quibbling over this issue given the stakes of the situation.
Straddling the line is an impressive turn barging straight gay the line is easy, and sort of boring. For some comedians and peter writers, moving away from certain jokes means you're "appeasing the woke mob" see also: the turn around Dave Chappelle's more recent comedy specialswhereas for others, finding the ever-shifting line of what's deemed acceptable is part of the fun.