("Family Guy Season 9: Road to the North Pole.” Screen Shot, Property owned by Seth Mcfarlen and Fox.)
In this two-parter from way back in the 9th season of Family Guy,
Stewie is pissed when he is blown off by Santa at the Quahog Mall and
decides to head to the North Pole, dragging a reluctant Brian along for
the ride.
It is only fitting that one of the best Family Guy
Christmas episodes center around Stewie and Brian. Despite the decline
the show has taken over the years, it is safe to say that most episodes
surrounding just these two characters tend to be their strongest. The
two have a great dialogue together, which is doubly amusing when you
realize that they are voiced by the same voice actor and series creator
Seth MacFarlene, and the adventures they get into tend to be highly
creative and even touching here and there (as much as the show is able
to be anyway).
What impresses in this special is the scope that went into it, the animation team going all out in really giving the world of Family Guy,
particularly Quahog, actual size and visual depth, expressed
particularly well with some great overhead shots and animated angle
shots, and the colour palate just popped.
There were numerous guests such as Drew
Barrymore, H. Jon Benjamin, David Boreanaz (whose appearance as a
glowing face in the sky was a clever little word play gag on his name) ,
Carrie Fisher, Karley Scott Collins, and Ron MacFarlene, Seth’s father
who did a mildly decent job as the jolly apathetic narrator (and
actually does have a surprisingly good voice for the work), with some
decent references to other Christmas films without overtaking the
overall narrative, even keeping their cutaway gags to a minimum which
was appreciated in this type of episode, and also showed that they don’t
always need their cutaway crutch (sadly not a sentiment strongly
utilized in later seasons).
The strongest element of the show though had to be the music.
Damn the music! I don’t think that anyone
who watched the episode will likely forget Santa’s number “Christmas
time is Killing Us” composed by Ron Jones, it had that near epic quality
that one would find at home in a good musical. It is unsurprising that
it was nominated for an Emmy. Bruce McGill voiced Santa (howdy can he
really exercise those vocals!) had a strong clear base that just puts
the right amount of dark tones in the song and works well with the
background singers and Stewie’s lighter tones.
The story itself holds up as well with the
humour mostly decent to eliciting some laughs here and there, though
the home invasion scene raised an eyebrow or two. What was more
impressive about the story is that at the time of its release the whole
anti-Christmas sentiment was really kicking off, if it hadn’t already,
and this special very cleverly balances that anti-holiday sentiment, the
pro-holiday sentiment, and the don’t give a crap either way sentiment
quite well.
Overall, this is a Christmas special I would
recommend giving a glance to for the sheer visual, musical, and
narrative spectacle that it is and the obvious effort that went into its
production.
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