JUNGLE LOVE (FAMILY GUY)

'“Jungle Love”' is the thirteenth episode from the fourth season of the Fox animated television series ''Family Guy''. It guest stars Carrie Fisher as Angela and Jay Mohr as the Joe Pesci-like Vinny. 8.97 million people watched this episode when it first aired on Fox. The episode’s title is a reference to a single of the same name by Steve Miller Band (Morris Day also has a song with the same name).

Contents

Plot summary

Notes

Cultural references

Plot summary

Chris is excited to become a freshman at the local high school, until Joe tells Chris about the “Freshman Hunt,” a hazing ritual in which the freshmen are beaten with paddles by everyone. When Chris shows up at school Lois yells out “Freshman!” to lure over other students. After a short chase Chris is caught, and is paddled by several people, including the mayor, playing a part in the movie ''Dazed and Confused''. Chris asks Brian for advice. Brian tells Chris about his time in the Peace Corps. Chris decides to join the Corps and goes to South America, where he becomes popular with the natives. When he gets the tribe to dance, he is married to the chief’s daughter, as dictated by the tribe’s customs.
In the meantime, Peter, who has been unemployed for quite some time, goes to work at the Pawtucket Brewery, where drinking on the job is allowed as long as the employee can control himself. But Peter can’t control his drinking, so he is demoted to working for a mentally handicapped man whom he can’t understand, but is more qualified than him (Opie).

When Lois learns of Chris leaving, she immediately travels down to South America with the rest of the family. Disillusioned with his new job, Peter is as eager to go there as anyone else. Upon their arrival Peter is seen as the richest man in the country with just $37. Many of the natives of the country then become Peter’s slave for just nickels and dimes. When Chris accuses Peter of “using” the natives to escape his troubles, Lois points out that that is also what Chris did. Chris then decides to return to Rhode Island, telling his wife that he must leave her, casually referring to his status as a freshman. The natives respond exactly as the upperclassmen in Quahog do, so they chase the Griffins in a very hostile manner. The Griffins escape on a seaplane ''a la'' Indiana Jones, but forget Meg, whose back is riddled with darts and arrows.

Notes

★ From this episode forward, Peter is employed as a shipping clerk (a brewer before he was demoted) at the Pawtucket Pat Brewery. It was last seen in “Wasted Talent” (in a spoof of ''Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'') and has changed since Pawtucket Pat sold it. Chris also becomes a freshman at James Woods High.

★ Peter’s ideal jobs are cowboy, astronaut, warlock, more powerful astronaut, and beer expert. This is referenced in a further episode “Patriot Games” when Peter pretends to be a “Secret Agent Cowboy Astronaut Millionaire” in order to impress his old friends at a high school reunion.

★ Probably a one-time joke, Meg died at the end of the episode when she was shot in the back by the arrows of the tribe and fell face first in the water. In all following episodes, she is fine.

★ In Stewie’s short clip journey after seeing the remake of ''Bewitched'', after taking off his shoes and placing them on the counter beside the metal detector, he never picks them up and seemingly leaves them behind. However, in the next part of the clip, he has them back on his feet.

★ During the scene in which the family found Chris' note, when it zooms out to Peter playing with the paddleball, the family picture to the right changes the color of Brian’s hair from white to brown.

Cultural references

★ The scene in which Chris is beaten with paddles is from the movie ''Dazed and Confused''. As in the film, the song in the background is “No More Mr. Nice Guy” by Alice Cooper. Mayor Adam West’s sequence is directly referencing Ben Affleck’s character from the same film.

★ In a cutaway, Peter has a job as “Sandy Duncan’s glass eye.” Duncan is a Broadway and television actress who underwent surgery for a brain tumor in 1972. She said that she lost sight in one eye and unconfirmed rumors persist that it was removed and replaced with a prosthetic. Sandy Duncan was referenced in the musical number from “Brian Wallows and Peter’s Swallows.”

★ Stewie is also shown dressed as Dustin Hoffman from the film ''Tootsie''.

★ The chief says “Never had it, never will” and laughs. This was a commercial slogan for 7 Up from the 1980s, indicating that 7-Up was always caffeine-free.

★ The song Chris leads the tribe in singing is Wham!’s 1984 hit “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”

★ Peter pays the natives to re-enact the infamous “Contest” episode from the NBC sitcom ''Seinfeld''. The dialogue spoken by the high priestess playing Elaine, however, is from the episode “The Stall.”

★ In a cutaway, Stewie tours Europe with a musical rendition of ''My Left Foot'', Irish author Christy Brown’s memoir of his struggle with cerebral palsy, which was turned into an acclaimed film starring Daniel Day-Lewis in 1989. Neither the book nor the film were as whimsical as Stewie’s interpretation.

★ There is an extended sequence in which Stewie flies to Los Angeles to punch actor/comedian Will Ferrell for his role in the 2005 film remake of the television series ''Bewitched'', which generally opened to poor reviews. The writers of the show stated in the DVD commentary for this episode that they like Will Ferrell, but they hated the film remake of ''Bewitched'' and felt let down by him (and mentioned that the joke was originally Stewie going to beat up Steve Martin after seeing him in ''Bringing Down the House''). Ferrell previously guest starred in the episode “Mr. Saturday Knight.”

★ The ending when the Griffins are escaping from the natives is a spoof of a similar scene in the beginning of ''Raiders of the Lost Ark''.