Love, Blactually

"Love, Blactually"

"Love Blactually" (alternatively spelled "Love Blacktually") was the premiere to the seventh season of the FOX animated series Family Guy. It guest stars Kat Foster as Brian's new girlfriend Carolyn and Meredith Baxter as herself. Loretta Brown makes her first appearance since The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire.

Plot

Brian has been growing concerned that he may never meet a woman who doesn't drive him crazy until he meets a woman named Carolyn to whom he feels a great connection. The two begin dating and things seem to be looking up for the two, but when Carolyn invites Brian in for the night after a date, Stewie stops them. Stewie explains that Brian always rushes into his relationships too quickly, and that is why he can never maintain them. Brian agrees and begins following Stewie's advice of taking things slow, with Stewie eavesdropping all the way. Three weeks pass and the two decide it's finally time to take things to the next level, but when he goes to Carolyn's apartment, he catches her making love in her car with Cleveland.

Carolyn explains to the incredulous Brian that she had assumed he just wanted to be friends with her since he refused to have sex for so long. Brian does everything he can to move on from this, but he just keeps running in to Cleveland and Carolyn making love everywhere, even in the middle of a baseball field on live television, thus unintentionally rubbing it in. Stewie comes up with a solution: Brian should go to Cleveland's ex-wife, Loretta, and convince her to get back together with him so Brian can win back Carolyn for himself. Brian finds during his visit with Loretta that she, as it turns out, feels guilty for when she cheated on him with Quagmire. Brian begins to feel uncertain that he should carry out this plan until Cleveland announces his plans to elope with Carolyn in Hawaii. Cleveland is then approached by Loretta, who wishes to patch things up with him, and tells him to meet her at her hotel.

Cleveland turns to the Griffins for advice on whether or not he should take Loretta back. Peter and Lois are uncertain as Loretta's affair was unforgivable, but Brian seems to encourage it, so Cleveland decides to meet her to at least tell him how he feels. Becoming rather suspicious of Brian, Peter convinces Quagmire to advance on Loretta in her hotel room for Cleveland to walk in on, but Loretta kicks Quagmire out of the room in time. Loretta wants to start a new life with Cleveland, but he says that while he will always have a place in his heart for her, he has to move on with his own, and advises Loretta to do the same. He goes to Carolyn's apartment when he sees Carolyn making love with someone outside in her car... But the culprit turns out to be Quagmire instead of Brian; it seems that Brian had bailed out of the plan entirely. Since Brian and Cleveland have been cheated on by the same woman, they remain friends.

Cultural References

• The title is a parody of the film Love Actually.
• Brian starts to lie to Peter, Lois and Stewie about Loretta being attractive and his nose starts to grow like Pinocchio's, a reference to a scene in the movie Airplane!. Brian even repeats the line "free to pursue a life of religious fulfillment" which is the line uttered by Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) in Airplane! as he tries to convince the passengers that all is well.
• When Cleveland finishes having sex with Carolyn, he uses the phrase "and boom goes the dynamite". This is a reference to Brian Collins, a sports reporter who used the phrase in a newscast at Ball State University.
• Peter references the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, parodying Cyrano as an anti-Semite.
• The episode opens with a costume party during which several characters in different costumes:
  • Brian and Stewie are both dressed as Snoopy from Peanuts. Brian even does Snoopy's trademark dance, and have Woodstock following him.
  • Peter is dressed as Laura Bush, and Lois as the run-over corpse of Michael Dutton Douglas, the man who was killed when she got in a car accident.
  • Quagmire is dressed as Napoleon Dynamite.
  • Cleveland is dressed as Charlie Chaplain.
  • Joe is dressed as Mark Spitz.
  • Lois' yoga trainer is dressed as an aborted fetus, although Brian initially believes that she is playing one of Freddy Krueger's victims.
• Peter and Brian reference the cause of Harry Houdini's ruptured appendix.
• Stewie finds a book called, "Horton Hears Domestic Violence in the next apartment and Doesn't Call 9-1-1."
• Cleveland claims that he and Carolyn met in Starbucks.
• Peter forgets Loretta's name and thinks her name was Jennifer Hudson (after guessing Weezie and Florida).
• Quagmire lies that he is "wearing a robe from the finest silk" and that is a reference to "The Emperor's New Clothes".
• The book near the beginning of the episode is The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.
• Mary Tyler Moore is mentioned.

Notes

• Chris and Meg do not appear in this episode despite Peter calling from downstairs for the kids to come downstairs.
• This marks the first episode where Brian expresses that he is an atheist, despite showing religious faith and even a belief in God in previous episodes such as "If I'm Dyin', I'm Lyin'".
• This episode is considered a sequel to "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire" as it shows Loretta is guilty for what she did to Cleveland in that episode. In fact, this is her first on-screen appearance since that episode.
• Lois makes a remark that Cleveland probably shouldn't take back Lorretta because she slept with another man, despite the fact that Lois herself slept with Bill Clinton in "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey" and tried to get Peter to take her back.
• Brian and Stewie's argument over Stewie's pronouncation of "ruined" is a reference to when Stewie and Brian argue over Stewie's way of saying "Cool Whip" in "Barely Legal".
• In the promo, Quagmire's Napoleon Dynamite t-shirt has a smiley face on it. But on the real episode, it says "Vote for Pedro".

External links

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