Brian Goes Back to College

"Brian Goes Back to College"

“Brian Goes Back to College (and Stewie Goes With for Obvious Comedy Reasons)” is an episode from season four of FOX animated television series Family Guy. The New Yorker is pivotal to the plot of this episode; that publication eventually wrote a friendly response to this episode which parodied them. [1]

Plot summary

Peter, Cleveland, Joe and Quagmire get dressed up as the protagonists from The A-Team to go to a 1980s TV show convention. The event is covered by Brian for a local newspaper. The editor of The New Yorker happens to read the paper, is impressed by Brian’s writing—and offers him a job. But when Brian admits he did not finish college, he is immediately fired.

Brian resolves to take the one class he needs to get his college degree. Stewie tags along with Brian, leaving Gary Coleman as his replacement at home. Brian stresses about his class while Stewie parties. Stewie edits one of Brian’s papers, and Brian sees it as cheating. He doesn’t like how Stewie did that, but quickly, Brian has second thoughts.

Meanwhile, spurred by winning the costume contest, Peter and friends decide to become a real A-Team. However, rather than solving the town’s problems they end up causing havoc. The episode concludes with them achieving redemption by helping Brian get to his final exam on time. He fails it, but he is glad for managing to finally finish college, without cheating. His family tells him that he should have (cheated).

Notes

The fact that Brian went to Brown was first stated in "The Story on Page One."

This episode refers to two gags from previous episodes which have been criticized for going on too long: The first is when Stewie begins to bug Brian about his novel in the same way he did (with the high pitched voice) in the episode “Brian the Bachelor,” but this time Brian hits him with a book before he goes on for too long, the second immediately follows the A-Team intro parody, with Peter clutching his leg and exhales exactly as he did in “Wasted Talent,” although he only makes that noise once instead of continuing.

The Stephen Hawking functionary who had been a fellow contestant in “Brian the Bachelor” (and was a contestant in the Special Olympics in “Ready, Willing, and Disabled”) has since married a fellow quadriplegic who also speaks with an electronic keyboard.

Censorship

According to DVD commentary, Stewie’s “Amateur Gynecologist” T-shirt was originally supposed to read, “Free Moustache Rides,” but it was objected by Standards and Practices.

Goofs

• In the promos for this episode, Stewie’s shirt (in the scene where he and Brian are at a booth and Brian regrets cheating on his homework) is a plain white T-shirt, but in the actual episode, the T-shirt reads, “Amateur Gynecologist.”

Cultural references

• Peter and his friends impersonate the A-Team with Peter as “Hannibal” Smith, Quagmire as “Faceman” Peck, Joe as “Howling Mad” Murdock (misspelled “Murdoch” in the intro) and Cleveland as B. A. Baracus. Cleveland says, “I pity the fool,” a catch phrase associated with Mr. T, the actor who played B.A. on the show, although the line actually originated from his character Clubber Lang, in the film Rocky III, not The A-Team, where he mostly restricted himself to calling people “fools.”
• The original A-Team opening went as follows:

“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...THE A-TEAM.”

For this episode, it was changed to:

“In 2005, a group of local misfits won a costume contest at an ’80s TV convention. These men promptly returned home and drank some beer. Today they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...THE A-TEAM.”

• Bill Cosby is seen leading a group of similarly dressed men in aerobics that imitate Cosby’s mannerisms.
• Small Wonder, a 1985-1989 sci-fi sitcom, is referenced in this episode. When Peter and his friends visit the ’80s television convention, a booth for Small Wonder is seen in the background. Tiffany Brissette is seen sitting in the booth, with a sign that says Tiffany “Vicki” Brissette. Tiffany played the main character of the series, a robot named Victoria “Vicki” Ann-Smith Lawson.
• A sign says “In loving memory of Ubu,” the mascot of UBU Productions which produced shows such as Family Ties.

File:Tag4sickcats.png

“This spray is definitely not for me.”

• In a flashback, Peter tries “TAG Body Spray for Sick Cats.” This parodies commercials for TAG, in which men simply spray TAG on themselves, and women flock to them. Peter has a similar experience, only with actual sick cats instead of women.
• After he is fired from his job at The New Yorker, Brian encounters a “No Dogs Allowed” sign, hears a booming voice enforcing the rule and then lays on top of a doghouse. This parodies the Peanuts character Snoopy in the 1972 film Snoopy, Come Home.
• Chris says he saw an after-school special about dropping out of college and that “it didn’t work out too well for Kristy McNichol. But then again, nothing did.” McNichol, star of the 1970s drama Family, has been out of the spotlight. Family Guy made another joke about McNichol in the episode “Holy Crap.”
• A cutaway parodies the execution of King Louis XVI of France as a simple job firing.
• Gary Coleman takes Stewie’s place while he’s at Brown. Coleman combines his catch phrase with one of Stewie’s to form “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, vile woman?”, because he owed Stewie a favor.
• When Stewie points out to Brian that “lots of people cheat,” the scene cuts to Ashlee Simpson’s infamous performance on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Jude Law where she gets caught lip-synching and dances awkwardly before leaving the stage. The background music, however, is Paul Robeson performing “Ol’ Man River” from the musical Show Boat.
• Looking at the scoreboard when Brian and Stewie are at the Brown football game, you can see the opposing team to be “the Board of Education” a reference to the famous court case Brown v. Board of Education, which declared unconstitutional the segregation of public schools.
• The scene where Stewie falls to the floor, legs twitching just within frame with the camera still running after seeing Meg undress through his video camera is reminiscent of the final scene in the 1999 horror film The Blair Witch Project.
• Roger Williams Park is an actual park in Providence, Rhode Island, named after Rhode Island founder Roger Williams.
• The scene in which Brian and Stewie work out in preparation for Brian’s final exam is a parody of Rocky Balboa’s training session for his fight with Ivan Drago in the movie Rocky IV. Brian goes as far as to yell “DRAGO!” at the peak of the mountain, as Rocky did in the movie. This is the second Rocky reference in this episode. As in the film, the song in the background is “Heart’s on Fire” by John Cafferty.