Peterotica

"Peterotica"

"Peterotica" is the twenty-fourth episode from season four of Family Guy. The episode originally broadcast on April 23, 2006, and was written by Patrick Meighan and directed by Kurt Dumas. The plot follows Peter starting to write erotic novels. After asking Carter Pewterschmidt for publishing money, Carter is sued after a man has a car accident whilst listening to an audio book of one of Peter's novels. Bankrupt, Peter attempts to help Carter realize that life as a middle-class citizen is enjoyable, but Carter soon gets his fortune back, and returns to hating Peter. Meanwhile, Stewie attempts to train for the Olympics, despite discouraging comments from Brian.

Plot

Peter, Joe, and Cleveland accompany Quagmire to the local erotica store, where they find themselves fascinated by the oddities. There, Peter buys an erotic book called Much Ado About Humping, a parody of the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing. He finds it disappointing. His friends suggest he write his own erotic book; this sells well from its beginning stages as a Xeroxed, stapled manuscript to its later incarnation as a professionally-produced audio-book read by Betty White and produced by Carter Pewterschmidt.

A distracted, aroused driver listens to the audio-book and crashes into the Kool-Aid Man's house while trying to take his shirt off. The driver hires Scott Greenberg, Attorney at Law to sue Carter because the audio-book states that Carter was the publisher, whose entire assets are promptly seized. Peterotica is also pulled from the shelves of all book stores. An enraged Carter, feeling ruined, goes to Quahog to kill Peter with a rifle, but after Lois convinces him not to, he lives with the Griffins, while his wife divorces him and later marries Ted Turner.

Meanwhile, Stewie practices to be a gymnast in the Olympics. He practices pole vaulting with the unconscious Chris as a cushion. His training climaxes with an in-the-house vault that winds up getting him a large shard of glass in his head.

Peter tries to teach Carter how to be a regular person. Peter's attempt fails and Carter tells Peter what's wrong with his life. After Peter realizes his life sucks, he and Carter try to find ways to make money. Peter and Carter try several different ways of making money including stealing Lois' wallet, selling Meg pot (Carter knocks her out with a lamp and says "Now we have the pot and the money!"), making a teen drama TV show a la Dawson's Creek, and robbing a train, but each attempt fails. At the end, Barbara comes to Quahog to retrieve Carter, telling him that she divorced Turner and took half his assets. Despite the fact that he helped Carter turn his life and views of normal people around, Peter gets nothing. Lois tries to cheer Peter up by saying that they have true happiness since they have each other and that money doesn't matter; in doing so, she mentioned that she turned down $10 million from Carter ten years ago. After discovering this, Peter has a vivid fantasy of murdering Lois as she continues speaking.

Notes

• This episode marks the third appearance of the Kool-Aid Man (seen previously in "Death Has a Shadow" and Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story).
• While the guys are in the adult book store, "Charwoman", one of actress Carol Burnett's characters in her 1970s show The Carol Burnett Show, is shown mopping the floor. On March 16, 2007, Burnett attempted to sue the producers of Family Guy for copyright infringement, trademark violation, statutory violation of right of privacy, and misappropriation of name and likeness. The lawsuit was later thrown out of court.
• Technically, in real life, the driver could not sue Carter; being behind the wheel, he is solely responsible for his actions. Such legal actions are usually used in cases for tort reform.
• In this episode Lois's mother leaves Carter and gets married to Ted Turner then divorced and got half of CNN but in the episode "Screwed the Pooch", Turner lost CNN in a hand of poker to Carter.
• This is the second episode to take a swipe at Renée Zellweger; the first episode to do so is "Blind Ambition", where Quagmire was trying to picture something unattractive in order to prevent himself from getting an erection.
• Joe says that Carol Burnett's ear-tug was her way of saying goodnight to her mother, but it was actually meant for her grandmother.

DVD exclusive scenes

A scene cut on TV, but available on the DVD (and iPod version), is a short scene of Brian and Peter watching Blind Justice, where the protagonist runs out of the police station and hits a wall (which is where the episode of Blind Justice ends) while investigating a case.

Censorship

On the TV version of this episode, the erotica novels Peter wrote (as shown in the montage) are: Angela's Asses, Shaved New World, Harry Potter and the Half-Black Chick, and What I Would Do Sexually to Hillary Clinton. On the DVD version, there’s an added title between Angela’s Asses and Shaved New World called Catcher in the Eye, depicting a brunette woman in a red bra with a bull’s-eye on her left eye. This was edited because, according to the DVD commentary, the censors objected to the implied male ejaculation joke portrayed in the book cover. In contrast, the syndicated rerun of this episode edits out the entire montage featuring Peter's examples of erotica.

Cultural references

• Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe visit an adult book store named “Pornoslavia: Formerly Kenny Rogers’ Roasters,” where Peter watches a coin-operated movie booth showing “The Naughty Flapper Girl,” which depicts a woman voting for Taft. Also, while in the adult book store, Quagmire performs a short parody of “Make ’Em Laugh” originally performed by Donald O’Connor in Singin’ in the Rain.
• The titles of Peter's novels parody that of Brave New World, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and Catcher in the Rye.
• In a film entitled The Picnic, Jude Law and Renée Zellweger have their picnic ruined by ants. Zellweger, whose face is distorted to look like that of an anteater in what Peter refers to as her “scrunch-face routine,” proceeds to consume the ants while Del Amitri’s “Roll to Me” plays (according to the commentary, Seth McFarlane mentions that “Roll to Me” is almost always used in the trailers to romantic comedies).
• Stewie has a Mac laptop and amuses himself with the text-to-speech feature available in SimpleText.
• Julia Roberts is portrayed as a narcissist in a tsunami relief television spot.
• The song that plays in the background during Stewie’s floor routine is “Rondo Alla Turca” from Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11, K331.
• Peter sings the famous Sabre Dance theme from Aram Khachaturian’s Gayane ballet whilst riding a unicycle.
• The lawyer is forced to endure a Rancor battle, just like Luke Skywalker did in Return of the Jedi. After the lawyer defeats the Rancor, Carter says "I didn't know Greenberg was a Jedi name."
• Stewie claims that getting hurt while doing his vault will get him onto a box of Wheaties. This is a reference to Kerri Strug, who went through exactly that.
• When Peter talks about The Tracy Ullman Show, there is a cutaway of the Griffin family drawn and voiced very crudely compared to the way they are today. This is a reference to The Simpsons and how they were first featured on The Tracy Ullman Show, appearing and sounding differently than they do today.
• Peter and Carter's TV show is fashioned after teen drama Dawson's Creek, with Carter as Katie Holmes' character and Peter as James Van Der Beek's character. Peter also does a parody of the opening theme with different lyrics.
• While Ted Turner is taking a bath, Babs places toy figures of Elmo, Telly, and Ernie from Sesame Street and asks him if they can have a bath. Ted responds yes to Elmo and Telly, but says no to Ernie because Ernie "doesn't like monsters."
• The Peterotica on tape has the voice of Betty White, and also later in the episode, Betty White comes to the Griffin's door looking for the person who put her voice on the tapes. Her face is also on the tape covers.

Reception

In a review of Family Guy, Volume Four, Mike Drucker regards "Peterotica" and "PTV" as "new classics." In a review of the scene where Peter acts as a landlord over a rat, Bob Sassone of TV Squad wrote "To be honest, I'm not even sure what the hell was going on there, it was so disturbing." The episode sparked controversy over a depiction of the Charwoman cleaning character, a character owned by comedian Carol Burnett after it was used in the episode without her consent.