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Blue Harvest

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"Blue Harvest"

"Blue Harvest" is the hour-long premiere to the sixth season of the FOX series Family Guy. It originally aired on September 23, 2007. The episode is a retelling and parody of the blockbuster film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, recasting the show's characters into Star Wars roles.[1] For this purpose, and for the first time in the history of Family Guy, this episode runs an hour long with commercials (48 minutes for the DVD version). It was also made to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Star Wars franchise. The name "Blue Harvest" was the fake working title for the 1983 production of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

It was written by Alec Sulkin and is directed by Dominic Polcino. It guest starred H. Jon Benjamin, Kirker Butler, Steve Callaghan, Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Mick Hucknall, Rush Limbaugh, Helen Reddy, Alex Thomas, Don Tai and Judd Nelson. It received generally positive reviews from critics. Its sequel, "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side", was originally scheduled to air as the 7th season finale,[2] but has been pushed back to season 8, and is now available on DVD and Blu Ray[3].[4] Like the previous installment, the poster for "Dark Side" is based on the design of an actual Star Wars poster.

Production

At the 2007 Comic Con, a series of clips was shown at a panel for Family Guy from the season premiere episode, showing the Family Guy characters as Star Wars characters. The episode aired on September 23, 2007, with some slight changes from the clips shown at Comic Con. Parts of this episode were shown at Star Wars Celebration IV, at which Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, a Star Wars fan since childhood, was a special guest,[5] and again at Comic-Con International 2007.[6] The episode was officially endorsed by Lucasfilm, especially George Lucas, who revealed in his conversation with MacFarlane that he has TiVoed every single episode of Family Guy without having to buy the DVDs and, in addition to Jackass, it's the only show he watches. MacFarlane said they were extremely helpful when the Family Guy crew wanted to parody their works.[7]

Rush Limbaugh makes a cameo[8] as the Tatooine radio commentator. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo reprise their roles from National Lampoon's Vacation as Clark and Ellen Griswold. Mick Hucknall of Simply Red and Helen Reddy also provide their own voices. In the DVD release, Judd Nelson reprises his role from The Breakfast Club as John Bender during the Rebels' briefing.

Plot summary

While the Griffins are watching a television program one night (a golf game with the two cameramen making remarks about Phil Mickelson's wife), the power goes out and they are left sitting in the dark with no other form of entertainment. While they wait for the power to return, Peter decides to tell the story of Star Wars, where the characters from Family Guy are re-imagined as Star Wars characters.

An extremely expository opening crawl reveals several plot spoilers such as Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father and Princess Leia being his sister before trailing off to talk about Angelina Jolie and her movie Gia. Finally, a large Rebel ship is seen being captured by a Star Destroyer. On the ship are the droids C-3PO (Quagmire) and R2-D2 (Cleveland). While the ship is boarded by stormtroopers, Princess Leia (Lois) tries to send an MPEG to Obi-Wan Kenobi through R2, but encounters so many complications that R2 offers to deliver the message himself. Leia is captured by Darth Vader (Stewie) while R2 and C-3PO flee to Tatooine in an escape pod, where they are captured by Jawa traders.

The droids are sold to a family of moisture farmers, where nephew Luke Skywalker (Chris) wishes to join the Rebellion and fight the evil Empire, all the while enjoying John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra performing in the background. While cleaning the droids that night, Luke stumbles upon Leia's message inside R2, who escapes by the next morning. Luke and C-3PO go out after him and meet Obi-Wan Kenobi (Herbert), who takes the three to his hut. Leia's message explains that R2 contains the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, which must be sent to her father on her home planet of Alderaan (the message also mentions a certain "mess" he got into with the children there). Obi-Wan tells Luke that he must learn the ways of the Force and accompany him to Alderaan, and gives him his own lightsaber. Realizing that the Empire would be looking for the droids, Luke returns home to discover that his home has been destroyed and his aunt and uncle killed by Imperial forces, along with John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra, though Luke is more concerned with Williams' death, since the film must now be scored by Danny Elfman, whom Luke beheads after hearing a few seconds of his music. Regardless, the original score plays throughout the rest of the episode.

Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids travel to Mos Eisley in search of a ship and pilot to take them to Alderaan. At a local cantina, they meet and hire smuggler Han Solo (Peter), "the only actor whose career wasn't destroyed by this movie", and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca (Brian), who agree to take them on their ship, the Millennium Falcon. The group is spotted by stormtroopers and flees into space, evading pursuing Star Destroyers with some flashy maneuvers (i.e., listing lazily to the left) before jumping into hyperspace, traveling through the time vortex tunnel from the opening of the Tom Baker-era Doctor Who. Meanwhile, Leia is being held captive on the Death Star, where commanding officer Grand Moff Tarkin (Mayor West) has Alderaan destroyed to test the space station's "planet blower-upper gun."

The Millennium Falcon exits hyperspace into the middle of an Asteroid field where Alderaan once was. The ship is then captured by the nearby Death Star's tractor beam and brought into its hangar bay, assisted by valets. Disguising themselves as stormtroopers (and acting "real cool" to the tune of "Minnie the Moocher"), Han and Luke set off to rescue the captive Princess while Obi-Wan leaves to shut off the tractor beam, but not before performing "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" with stormtroopers as a farewell to Luke. Han, Luke, and Chewie head deeper into the Death Star and rescue Leia, and the four dive into a nearby garbage chute to escape from the stormtroopers. Ending up in the garbage compactor (the only instance Meg appears, as the dianoga skulking in the murky water), they are nearly crushed until Threepio gets high off of marijuana Artoo gave him earlier and leans against the off switch. Before they escape, Han and Chewie insist on taking a couch they found in the garbage with them. Obi-Wan turns off the tractor beam before he is confronted by Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel; in it, Obi-Wan's blade falls limp until he sees Luke, and it becomes erect. Vader strikes Obi-Wan down as the others board the Falcon and escape, taking their new couch with them.

Warding off a group of "Thai Fighters" sent to stop them, the Falcon journeys to the Rebel base at Yavin IV where the Death Star plans are analyzed by the Rebels and a weakness is found. The attack requires a pilot to skim along a trench in a one-man starfighter to attack a vulnerable exhaust port added for aesthetics (Vader had ordered it to be boarded up earlier, but delayed the process to "get estimates"); in addition, they watch an instructional video featuring Magic Johnson that explains the strategy. Luke joins the assault team while Han collects his reward for the rescue (a gift basket with rather meager prizes) and leaves, much to Luke's dismay. The Rebel fighters suffer heavy losses (including Redd Foxx, who cries out, "I'm comin', Elizabeth!" before his ship explodes) during the assault, though Luke remains piloting one of the few remaining ships. During his run, Luke hears Obi-Wan's voice telling him to use the Force, and he turns off his targeting computer. Darth Vader appears with his own group of fighters and is about to fire at Luke's ship, when Han arrives in the Millennium Falcon (sitting comfortably with Chewbacca at his side on his new couch) and attacks Vader and his wingmen, sending Vader's ship careening off into space. Guided by the Force, Luke fires a successful shot into the port which destroys the Death Star, and he returns to the Rebel base with his friends to celebrate their victory.

Back in the Family Guy universe, just after Peter wraps up the story, the power comes back on in their house. Everyone thanks Peter for keeping them entertained, though Chris points out that Robot Chicken already did the same thing three months before (Chris is voiced by Seth Green, creator of Robot Chicken). A discussion follows, in which Peter denigrates that show as Chris defends it. Chris finally leaves the room in frustration as Peter indifferently hums part of the Star Wars end credits music.

Reception

Reviews of this episode were generally positive. Critically, the Associated Press's Frazier Moore called it "a dead-on homage that hilariously picks apart Star Wars, along with much of real life".[9] Newsday's Diane Werts rendered a more mixed verdict, saying the episode "veer[s] wildly from bull's-eye satire to gotta-fill-time-now exposition", and was not as enjoyable for non-Star Wars fans.[10] Jon Caraminica of the Los Angeles Times felt it worked by playing to the show's strength, its cutaway gags, by being "almost entirely an aside". He wondered if the Robot Chicken conversation at the end was "a note of self-doubt, maybe, masking as self-awareness."[11] The Parents Television Council, a group that has frequently criticized Family Guy, criticized the episode for sexual dialogue that it perceived to be frequent in the episode, enough for the episode to have an "S" content descriptor for sexual content; the episode was rated TV-14-DLV on Fox.[12]

This episode has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program (for Programming One Hour Or More),[13] but it lost to rival South Park's "Imaginationland".[14] It also won a Saturn Award for Best Presentation on Television.[15]

Sequels and DVD release

With the episode's ratings success, a sequel episode entitled "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" was put into production, and parodies The Empire Strikes Back. It was released on December 22, 2009.[16] In February 2009, it was announced that a table read for a Return of the Jedi parody was already done. It is titled "We Have A Bad Feeling About This", which is a play on the line "I have a bad feeling about this" (a phrase which is repeated many times throughout the Star Wars franchise).

The Fox Network has released a special DVD of "Blue Harvest" on January 15, 2008 in both regular and special editions. Extras include about four minutes of exclusive DVD material, an uncensored audio track, animatics and commentary by the Family Guy staff, interviews with Seth MacFarlane and George Lucas, a sneak preview to "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side" and a table read of dialogue from the episode. In addition, the special edition release will come exclusively with collectible packaging, a 3-D battle scene and glasses, a themed T-shirt, Size XL, trading cards, and brochure which will contain a letter from MacFarlane, script excerpts, pictures and so on.[16] An official website for the DVD has been made with DVD info, games, clips, behind the scenes and more.[17] As of January 16, a day after the DVD's release, both Apple and Fox have received multiple complaints that the 'Fox Digital Copy' of "Blue Harvest" fails to transfer properly to iTunes. Apple seems to have resolved the issue.[18]

References

  1. ^ Adalian, Josef (May 29, 2007). "'Family Guy' meets 'Star Wars'". Variety. Retrieved 2007-09-24. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. ^ TrekMovie.com Staff (2008-07-15). "Family Guy: Wrath of Khan? - TrekMovie Helps Cast It". TrekMovie.com. Retrieved 2008-07-15.
  3. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Family-Guy-Presents-Something-Dark/dp/B002LARYTW
  4. ^ Feb 25, 2009 09:37 AM (2009-02-25). "'Trek' cast to reunite on 'Family Guy'-The Live Feed". Thrfeed.com. Retrieved 2009-08-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ "The Force is With Family Guy". IGN. May 30, 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-24. {{cite news}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  6. ^ "Programming for Saturday July 28". Comic-Con. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
  7. ^ Burton, Bonnie (September 21, 2007). ""Family Guy" Creator Reveals Star Wars Cred". Starwars.com. Retrieved 2007-09-21. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  8. ^ "RushLimbaugh.com, Friday, September 21, 2007". Retrieved 2007-09-24.
  9. ^ Moore, Frazier (September 23, 2007). "TV Lookout: Highlights for Sept. 23-29". Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-09-25.
  10. ^ Werts, Diane (September 21, 2007). "Fox's 'Family Guy' takes on 'Star Wars'". Newsday. Retrieved 2007-09-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Caraminica, Jon (September 21, 2007). "Fox marks the return of 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad!'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2007-09-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ Schulenberg, Caroline (2008-04-11). ""Family Guy" on Fox". So You Think You Can Rate a TV Show?. Parents Television Council. Retrieved 2008-04-11.
  13. ^ "The 60th Primetime Emmy Awards and Creative Arts Emmy Awards Nominees are..." The Internet Movie Database. Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2008-07-18.
  14. ^ "60th Primetime Emmy Awards". Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
  15. ^ "Awards". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2008-07-24.
  16. ^ a b "The Griffin Clan Spoofs the First Star Wars Movie — There are two 'easter eggs' on the main disc: Under the 'Features' menu where the dianoga's/Meg's head pops up there is the teaser trailer for 'Something, Something, Something, Darkside'. Under the 'Options' menu on the reactor there is the footage of the cast going over the script for the sequel (Empire) to Blue Harvest. Family Guy Presents: "Blue Harvest"". Forbes. November 5, 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-08. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)[dead link]
  17. ^ "Family Guy Presents :Blue Harvest". Family guyblueharvest.com. Retrieved November 28, 2009.
  18. ^ "CanMag.Com". Blue Harvest Blows It. Retrieved January 16, 2008.
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