(courtesy IMDb)
SNAPSHOT
Peter must recover Lois’ Christmas brooch after gifting it away in a White Elephant exchange. Stewie changes his attitude upon learning he’s on Santa’s ‘Naughty List’. (courtesy Variety)
The first thing out of the prettily wrapped Christmas present box is that Family’s Guy’s 25th anniversary festive special, “Gift of the White Guy” is not some syrupy pile of warmhearted seasonal sentiment.
But c’mon, you’ve likely seen enough episodes so you knew that anyway, right?
What this piece of inspired festive animation does though is affirm that the Griffin family might be as anti-Christmas as it gets in some ways but that when the naughty or nice chips are down that they will … hilariously act in their festive self interest.
Well, mostly.
It turns out that maybe they do have a beating heart, after all; but not too much of one because while some sentiment is sweet, a whole Hallmark movie’s worth of it would only be NOT on brand but a tad annoying too.
After all, we tune into regular Christmas specials because they make our hearts swell with joy and remind us that life can be magical, warm and wonderful, and even if that’s not true as often as we’d like it to be, it’s still nice to know it’s possible.
But we tune into Family Guy, created by Seth MacFarlane (who, via his Christmas albums, happily resides on the seasonally gooey side of the street) because it will be irreverent, silly and just plain wrong in all the best ways.
What other Christmas special would give you a final scene so richly over the top in flagrantly unsentimental and gloriously bloody slapstick humour that you’re laughing up a storm at the horrific hilarity of it all mere moments after Lois (Alex Borstein) has returned a treasured item to someone because it’s the right and seasonally appropriate thing to do?
Sure, you’re thinking “Awwww, Lois did something really lovely! How Christmassy” – all the more remarkable after the thoughtless mess Peter (Seth Green) engendered caused her all kinds of fury and pain); does she get angry? Haha, no, because there’s no room left in the special which she admits in amusingly meta fashion – and then, well, you’re laughing like a loon when an oblivious Peter and Lois, wrapped in their own delusional virtue, miss what’s happening just behind their backs.
Similarly able to make moral compromises with his own selfishness is good old Stewie (Seth Green again) who, in his self-serving quest to get off the Naughty List – Brian (guess who? yeah, it’s Seth Green), accidentally ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- kills Meg (Mila Kunis) with a vapourising ray gun that he’d rather ironically thrown in the garbage (that’s a fantastically fun sight gag in itself; bins full of guns from Stewie’s hidden armoury) in his bid to be GOOD.
How’s that working for you, Stewie?
Quite how he gets Meg back must be left to the watching of “Gift of the White Guy”, but suffice to say, when she does return, and isn’t quite in factory condition, Stewie merely shrugs and takes avoiding fate’s guillotine as a victory of sorts.
That’s the twisted joy of the Griffins, even at Christmas – they wish for or do good things, but it’s always kind of tainted which when you think about it, is pretty true of people generally.
We love Christmas specials that assure us We Are Good People but the reality is we’re flawed and broken and fairly inconsistent, and “Gift of the White Guy” has a ton of fun with the idea, in the process gives us an hilarious and quite accurate story of how Christmas really is as opposed to what we wish it was.
Family Guy‘s “Gift of the White Guy” streams on Disney+