Fore, Father

Fore Father is an episode from the second season of the FOX animated television series Family Guy. First aired on August 1 2000. Written by Bobby Bowman, and directed by Scott Wood. Production code 2ACX16. This is the last episode of Season 2, the first episode of Season 3 is "The Thin White Line."

Plot summary

File:FGForeFather.png

Mister T shown as birds.

Peter leaves Chris to guard the food supplies while he goes fishing with his neighbors. Upon returning, Chris reports that raccoons have stolen the food. To teach Chris about responsibility, Peter gets him a job at the golf course, where he also tries to mould Cleveland Jr. into a famous golfer. Meanwhile, Brian leads Stewie to believe the vaccine shots he received are some kind of mind control.

Cultural references

• At the start of the episode, the family watches an episode of the Little House on the Prairie, a 1970s-era television show about life in the Midwestern United States during the late 19th century. In this episode, father Charles Ingalls plays cruel pranks on his blind daughter Mary.
• A flashback shows Peter used to be a spokesperson for Bounty paper towels.
• When the family tries to stop saying the same phrases spontaneously, they shout the name of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
• When Peter accuses Lois of being lazy, he suggests she put down her ginger ale and Redbook, a popular women’s magazine.
• Although network restrictions prevented it from being shown explicitly, it is implied that Peter and Cleveland got their penises caught in Chinese finger cuffs.
• Stewie uses Brian’s books to create papier-mâché replicas of the houseboat from the 1960s campy detective show Surfside 6 and the fort from the post-Civil War-era sitcom F Troop, another 1960s show.
• Stewie mentions that one of Brian’s books is by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. Brian is seen reading Dostoevsky in the future episode “Ready, Willing, and Disabled.”
• When Cleveland Jr. plays with a stick he says “I’m Daniel Boone,” an American pioneer. When the stick breaks in half he says “I’m Pat Boone. ‘Gonna have a Christmas special with Andy Williams.” Pat Boone and Andy Williams are both pop singers who reached their commercial peaks in the 1950s.
• When Peter suggests the world may have been created just for him, a cutaway shows Christof, who controlled the artificial world of the 1998 film The Truman Show.
• Peter calls part of the evening the “magic hour; the day’s not quite gone, the night’s not quite here and somewhere Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn’t love.” This is a reference to the Happy Days actor’s multiple, short-term relationships.
• Peter tries to teach Chris how to eat an Oreo, a reference to famous commercials of the cookie brand.
• Lois brings Brian some of Peter’s books, which include Mr. T by Mr. T, an autobiography of The A-Team star; T and Me by George Peppard, an actor who co-starred with Mr. T on The A-Team and For the Last Time, I’m Not Mr. T by Ving Rhames, an African-American actor with a physique like that of Mr. T. All of these books are fictitious.
• When encouraging himself to fight his perceived illness, Stewie tells himself “do not go gentle into that good night.” He first attributes the quote to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan but then corrects himself; it was written by poet Dylan Thomas.
• At the driving range, Cleveland Jr. shouts “I’m Tiger Woods,” referring to the professional golfer.
• A cutaway parodies the 1960s campy science fiction series Lost in Space, mocking the ways in which the father and leader of the expedition send his children off with strange characters on dangerous missions.
• Peter attracts Cleveland Jr.’s attention with Obsession, a perfume from fashion mogul Calvin Klein. He and Paddy then imitate Kline’s trademark commercials.
• Lois said that, when Meg was three years old, she accidentally ate the “adult brownies” she made for a Doobie Brothers concert.
• Cleveland Jr. sings a jingle for Honeycomb breakfast cereal
• Peter asks Cleveland Jr. to call him Mr. Drummond, a character from the 1980s sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, who adopted two African-American children. He later asks Jr. to call him Mr. Papadopoulos, the adopted white father of an African-America child on another 1980s show Webster.
• Paddy has a secret tunnel “like on Hogan's Heroes,” referring to the secret escape hatch of the characters on the 1960s POW camp sitcom.
• The beach scene featuring Chris and Quagmire parodies the clothing, music and nonsensical catch phrases of 1960s Beach Party films aimed at teenagers.
• Quagmire asks, “Are we in Tianenmen, because I see a square?” This puns on the Tian'anmen Square, the Beijing plaza that was the site of a famous 1989 crackdown on political dissent, and the use of the term square for an uncool person.
• After Peter tosses Cleveland Jr. a golf ball, he begins kicking it with his feet, singing “I’m Pelé,” a reference to the Brazilian soccer player best known by that nickname.

Trivia/Goofs

• Stewie weighs 29 pounds as of this episode.
• Brian's line "Did you know Mr. T always wanted to be a Broadway dancer?" is closed captioned as "Did you know that Mr. T wasn't the first choice for The A-Team?"
• The strip club in this episode is called "The Fuzzy Clam." A sign reading "Minors Welcome" can be seen in the window, apparently explaining how Chris got in.
• The beginning where the family watches "Little House on the Prairie" is cut from the FOX version, but not on Cartoon Network or the DVDs.
• Quagmire crashes his 1957 Chevrolet into a pole, but when we see him drive to the beach, it's in perfect shape.
• If the Fuzzy Clam welcomes minors, why did the stripper ask how old Chris was?
• Quagmire's fetish for women's feet is brought up in this episode and would be alluded to in Brian the Bachelorette (when he steals Brooke's sandal after getting caught dragging Brooke back to his room after drugging her drink) and I Take Thee Quagmire (Peter attempts to give Quagmire the Statue of Liberty's foot before he gets married).