Meg Griffin

Megan "Meg" Griffin is a cartoon character on the TV show Family Guy by Seth MacFarlane. She is the eldest child of Lois and Peter Griffin. She has two younger brothers, Chris and Stewie. She was voiced by an uncredited Lacey Chabert for the first season and by Mila Kunis in subsequent seasons, though Lacey Chabert reprised the role of Meg for several second season episodes.

Meg lives in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode Island, where she attends James Woods High School as a junior. Meg is constantly seen trying desperately to be part of the "cool crowd", fulfilling the much-used TV stereotype of an unpopular adolescent American female.

When Family Guy debuted in 1999, she was 15 years old. She was then turned 16 in the episode "I Never Met the Dead Man" (she got her driver's license) and remained that age throughout the show's initial run until she turned 17 in the episode "Peter's Two Dads."

Meg is often ridiculed and ignored by the rest of the family - for example, in "Lethal Weapons", where Peter tries an anger management technique by writing letters and not sending them, Meg's said, "Dear Meg, for the first four years of your life, I thought you were a housecat".

Appearance

Meg is relatively unremarkable in appearance, sporting shoulder-length brown hair and nearly always wearing a beanie-like hat (or, as Stewie calls it, a "hideous skullcap") and glasses. She has been seen without her hat in a handful of episodes for extremely small periods of time. However, in one full episode, she is seen without her beanie on, as she is in pajamas for most of it (Untitled Griffin Family History most likely because Peter woke her up from sleep.). She is slightly shorter than her younger brother Chris. She appears to have inherited the shape of her nose and head from her mother, and her brown hair and myopia from her father. She is chubby, and in one episode, an employee at a carnival guesses her weight as "a lot". In the episode "Barely Legal", she acknowledges her chubbiness by saying "I'm so fat and gross". There are several comments aimed at her weight in various episodes, though her girth may be due to her height, as she is only 10 pounds more than her mother. In one episode in which Meg is trying on Jeans she asks the opinion of the sales woman, when the sales woman sees Meg in her jeans she pours gasoline all over herself and sets herself on fire, before jumping through a window.

Her plain look is often a topic of humor for the show; though she looks like an average girl, characters on the show act as though she was horrifically ugly. The jokes vary from innocent ribbing (In "Brian: Portrait of a Dog", there is a heat wave in Quahog and Meg complains that Chris is hogging up all of the fans. Chris responds, "Well, you're hogging up all of the ugly!") to more serious, and sometimes exaggerated. In "Don't Make Me Over", two people drench themselves in gasoline, set themselves on fire, and throw themselves out a window upon seeing Meg. In another episode, a young man fired a nail gun into his own stomach in order to avoid a date with her. Also in the episode "Barely Legal", Meg's "backup" date, Jimmy, says he has to attend his little brother's funeral after briefly closing his front door and promptly shooting his little brother (this makes her believe it's because she's "so fat and gross"). Her "ugliness" may also be a source of her unpopularity. Meg was once held hostage by three burglars who mistook her for a male; later in that episode she asked one of the robbers if they were going to "have their way" with her. They refused and she got angry, shouting at them to have sex with her. They then filed a sexual harassment suit against her, which went ignored by her family. In another episode, Jackie Chan referred to her as a boy (specifically "Malcolm in the Middle") to her chagrin. In the episode "Prick Up Your Ears", Meg took an abstinence vow with her new boyfriend up until the end of the episode, where after seeing her nude, he dumped her. Another boyfriend of hers, nudist Jeff Campbell ("From Method to Madness") had no objections to her looks at all, but they have never been seen together since.

Meg has often been the fantasy woman of Neil Goldman right up until he began dating Cecilia in 8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter. Meg was also the subject of attention from the President of the Lesbian Alliance, Sarah. Meg was also, in the Perfect Castaway, the subject of interest from an older narrator from Super Friends in a cutaway gag. Glenn Quagmire has often been shown to have significant interest in Meg, asking her if she was 18 yet, spying on her and Sarah and on her sleepover party. Briefly in the episode Deep Throats, Mayor Adam West was dating Meg. Craig Hoffman also expressed an interest in her after her makeover.

Meg once received a makeover, drastically increasing her sexual appeal in the eyes of characters in the show. It was during this brief period when Meg, a popular singer at the time, lost her virginity to Saturday Night Live comedian Jimmy Fallon as part of an elaborate cold open sketch.

Despite Meg's supposedly average appearance, there have been insinuations that she has a nice butt. For instance, in the episode "Don't Make Me Over," Lois tells Meg that she should get a new pair of jeans to "show off your cute butt!" Also, in "Barely Legal", Garrett Morris in a cameo as the headmaster of the "New York School for the Hard-of-Hearing", says to Meg "Mmmm. I like that ass," clearly attracted to Meg.

Family life

When the series began, her family treated her as one of their own, and she didn't seem to be as much of a "loser" as she is today. However, as time went on, they have become increasingly resentful of her, from forgetting her birthday to reading her diary. In Petergeist, during a poltergeist attack on the Griffin house, they all escaped except for Meg, and when Lois told Peter to save her, he just responded with "Oh yeah right like I'm going back for Meg" and "We agreed that if we could only save two, we'd leave Meg!" In another episode, the whole family (except Brian) is talking on the telephone and Meg picks up. Everyone except Stewie quickly gets off the phone, and Stewie begs them not to leave him alone with Meg before being forced to engage in awkward conversation with Meg, who is not talking about anything weird. Nonetheless, most episodes unfairly portray Meg as the scapegoat of the Griffins' problems. In one episode, Joe Swanson is hanging from a ledge and Lois grabs his arm. After saying, "You're too heavy!" Joe says "Imagine I'm your child!" Lois slacks up, and Joe almost falls but grabs onto Lois's hand and says, "Not Meg! Not Meg!" and Lois then manages to pull Joe up with ease. Out of all the relationships with her family, the only normal one is that with Chris; even though they argue from time to time, he still goes to her in need of advice. Lois also seems to treat her well but can occasionally ignore her, as does Brian at times. Stewie, on the other hand, seems to delight in taunting and ridiculing her.

Relationship with Peter

Peter, of all the family members, seems to have the most resentment for her. He often belittles her, insults her, and occasionally attacks her physically. In "Untitled Griffin Family History," when burglars were raiding the house, and Meg came down and calmly and slowly asked what was wrong, Peter whacked her with a baseball bat saying that she had "startled" him. In a cutaway gag, Peter, while on steroids, is asked by Lois to pass the potatoes. He then screams "Dammit Meg!" and punches out Meg for no apparent reason. In "Prick Up Your Ears," Peter grounds Meg when she tries to correct him when he says a word wrong. Also, in "Breaking Out Is Hard To Do," the family helps get Lois out of jail and sneak into the back of a van to escape. When Meg asks "I wonder where we're we going", Peter slaps Meg and tells her to calm down. In another episode, he chases her around the kitchen table with his buttocks while flatulating, to the point where she falls down and vomits. A turning point came in "Road to Rupert," when Peter was forced to spend time with her as a result of getting his driver's license suspended, he begins to see that "[he has] a really wonderful daughter," especially after his drunken antics cause her to develop road rage, and the two bond. He then considers Meg his "secret best friend", but says that he'll still treat her badly in front of the family due to peer pressure and to "keep up appearances" . Then, Lois came out and asked if Peter wanted some lemonade, and Peter said,"No! What I want is a glass of better daughter", and threw the lemonade at Meg. In "Model Misbehavior," Lois announced to the family that she would become a model. Peter responds by saying that he would 'pleasure himself to her photos'. Chris and Meg agrees. Upon hearing Meg's response, Peter is disgusted and angry. Meg then said that she was trying to fit in. Being unable to control his anger, he kicks Meg out of the house. When she refuses to, Peter punches the wall and she runs away. In another scene, Meg is seen in the kitchen with Chris. Peter comes and Meg expresses her view on Lois parading herself half-naked. Peter then asked, "Meg, who let you back in the house?"

In the episode "Blue Harvest," after Meg suggests that Peter tell the story of when she was born, Peter uninterestedly rushes through it; in the story, Peter reveals that he and Lois mistook the afterbirth for Meg, only realizing it on their way home from the hospital, and had to go back to trade it for her (though whether this story was true or made up due to Peter's hatred of her remains to be seen).

Peter's friends Cleveland, Joe, and (to a lesser extent) Quagmire also have the same resentment towards Meg. In "Hell Comes to Quahog," Cleveland comments to Peter that "Meg is my least favorite of your children."

References

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• S. Callaghan Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide : Seasons 1 - 3 New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2005
• A. Delarte, "Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 4" in Bob's Poetry Magazine, 3.January 2006: 17, 20 - 22, 24 - 25 http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs03Ja.pdf