The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou

"The Tan Aquatic with Steve Zissou" is the eleventh episode of season 5 of the FOX animated television series Family Guy and ninety-first episode overall. It first aired February 18, 2007. The title of this episode is a parody of the film title The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Plot summary

After Peter takes Stewie on the golf course all day with him, Stewie contracts a tan all over his body. Stewie decides he likes the tan and begins to frequently tan in a tanning bed in his room. But one day, Stewie tells Brian to wake him up after fifteen minutes of tanning. Brian falls asleep and does not wake up for six hours. Stewie is extremely sunburnt and he discovers a spot on his stomach. Convinced it is skin cancer, Stewie begins to live out his dying wishes. In the end, Stewie does not have cancer, and he gives up tanning.

Meanwhile, Chris learns that his best customer, Herbert, has made Kyle, a boy who is normally mean to Chris, his new paper boy and he decides to confront Herbert and Kyle. He ends up getting pushed over by Kyle, which angers Peter. Peter goes to talk with Kyle, but after Kyle makes fun of him, Peter beats him up. Kyle's mother agrees not to press charges if Peter apologizes to Kyle, which he reluctantly complies to. Kyle says that he would have done the same thing to Peter and he encourages Peter to bully again. Peter begins to do mean things to the people around him, but after Chris talks to him Peter decides he shouldn't bully everyone, rather he should bully his old school bully, Randy. Peter finds Randy, who is now an insurance agent with multiple sclerosis. Thinking, by Randy saying "I have MS", that he is bragging that he has a monkey's scrotum, Peter is about to beat up Randy, but is stopped by Chris and he convinces him bullying is wrong.

Notes

• This is the first time in the series that Meg is seen vomiting.

• Another hint at Stewie's homosexuality was when Brian taught him how to ballroom dance, leading him to say "I love you" to Brian who says a shocked "What?" and Stewie to cover it up claims he said olive juice. He then says "Olive Juice you too" (I love you too).

• The previous episode, Peter's Two Dads, depicts Peter discovering that he is actually a McFinnegan and not a Griffin. However in this episode he makes reference to his great-grandfather "Turn-of-the-century-take-on-all-comers Griffin", who looks exactly the same as Peter with the addition of a moustache and slightly different hairstyle.

• Since the series inception, Peter has been 42. Stewie mentions this in the season 3 episode Brian Does Hollywood, and this was confirmed in Stewie Loves Lois by Dr. Hartman. When Lois is talking to Peter in the tree, she says "You're 43 years old", indicating that Peter has aged.

• Kermit the Frog appears in this episode for the third time this season (the previous being in "Stewie Loves Lois" and "Mother Tucker").

• Despite Stewie seemingly lying on his "death bed", killing Lois is not one of his final wishes, although it's doubtful Brian would have complied with this request. This further adds to Stewie's recent tolerance of Lois (although he recently tried to kill her in The Courtship of Stewie's Father, he has paid relatively little attention to either disposing of her or ruling the world).

• Stewie's wistful ode to the "squiggly line" in his eye is actually a fairly accurate description of what is known as a Floater, a deposit within the eyeball's normally transparent vitreous humour.

• Michael Clark Duncan who did a voice in this episode also worked with Mila Kunis in the video game Saint's Row, both were actually part of the same gang in the game.

Censorship

• An entire cutaway involving Stewie trying to sleep amid the erotic moans and screams of a couple having sex is cut from the FOX airing, but left in the Adult Swim airing.
• When Brian squirts the lotion on a severely sunburned Stewie and Mr. Furley walks in (and thinks Brian is ejaculating on Stewie), Brian originally says, "Oh! Uh, hi, Mr. Furley. This isn't what it looks like!" before Mr. Furley says, "Never mind, I'll come back later!" and leaves. The "This isn't what it looks like" line is cut from the Fox version to make it less obvious that it is an ejaculation joke.

Cultural references

• The scene in which Stewie visits the Art Institute of Chicago (erroneously referred to as the Chicago Museum of Art) is a direct homage to the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The painting Stewie stares into is Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The song accompanying this segment is the original from the film, and is a cover of the acoustic version of the song by The Dream Academy of "Please, Please, Please Let me get what I want" by Steve Morrissey & Johnny Marr.
• Mr. Furley, the landlord portrayed by Don Knotts on Three's Company, walks in on Brian applying the lotion to Stewie in a (due to the camera angle) manner as though Brian was ejaculating in Stewie's face.
• Parodying Gremlins, Peter feeds a mogwai a drumstick after midnight, causing it to turn into Fran Drescher, whose head Peter then microwaves. Fran Drescher was last seen in the episode "Fifteen Minutes Of Shame".
• Peter, behaving like a bully, dangles Joe from his shoulders with rope and performs The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music, using Joe as a marionette.
• Brian is given a copy of a movie that "is essentially Brokeback Mountain from the point of view of the horses" where one of the horses peeked inside the tent and learned their relationships the 'hard way'[1].
• Martin Landau's distinct speech pattern is parodied after Stewie is disgusted with Lois' saliva being used to wipe off his fake moustache.
• Stewie sings Kokomo by The Beach Boys in his tanning bed. Similarly, when he is tanning in the garden, the song he is listening to is an instrumental version of "I Say a Little Prayer" by Dionne Warwick.
• The song Brian and Stewie ballroom dance to is an instrumental version of Cheek to Cheek by Irving Berlin (first featured in the film Top Hat, also featured as an important plot point in The Green Mile).

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Kermit, Fozzie, and Swedish Chef at the end of the episode.

• When Herbert says his phone is ringing, he imitates the Nokia tune.
• When Brian advises Stewie to "wait and see" whether or not he has cancer, Stewie says "Jim Henson had a wait and see attitude, and look what happened to him. Now we've got wrong-sounding Muppets," a reference to Henson's failure to properly address a cold he had, which led to pneumonia, and ultimately his death in 1990. The scene then cuts to Kermit the Frog and the Swedish Chef (two characters Henson voiced) in a dialogue sequence, with much different voice tones. The two would later appear at the end of the show, discussing the preceding events, when Fozzie Bear walks in, and says in a deep voice (supplied by actor Michael Clark Duncan): "Wocka wocka. Who wants to hear a funny-ass joke?" Unlike Kermit and the Chef, Fozzie would not fall into the category in real life, as he was voiced by Frank Oz, who is still alive today. It should be noted this gag could also refer to The Walt Disney Company's decision to have the Muppets be performed by different puppeteers rather than their usual ones outside of the movies.
• Dick Cheney is portrayed as a Wal-Mart greeter in a cutaway. He greets each customer with "Go fuck yourself," a reference to a 2004 incident where he said those words to Senator Patrick Leahy(D-VT) after he asked the Vice-president about Halliburton's alleged war profiteering.
• During his tan party, Stewie wears the kind of shades that are the trademark of movie producer Robert Evans.
• This episode's title is a reference to The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. This is the second Fox series to reference that movie in a title in 2007, the first being a The Simpsons episode, The Wife Aquatic, which aired on January 7.
• After getting off his beach chair during a tan, Stewie drinks a can of TaB, then slowly looks at the camera – a parody of TaB commercials in the 80's.
• Britney Spears' parental skills are questioned in a scene where she is holding her baby while talking on a phone, using his head for an ashtray and then dropping him.
• There is a dispute between Peter and Lois in regards to how different LEGO is from Mega Bloks.
• A parody of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger called Terry the Tiger is seen in the Griffin kitchen, saying "They'rrrrrrrrrre foooood!"
• When Brian discovers the melanoma on Stewie's belly, and says that it might be symptomatic of "the C-word", Stewie's delayed reaction causes him to exclaim "Eugh! Cancer?!" in a manner very similar to that of Terrence and Phillip from South Park.