Dammit Janet (Family Guy)
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“Dammit Janet!” is an episode from the second season of the FOX animated television series Family Guy. The title of the episode comes from the second song in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Plot summary
Concerned that Stewie isn’t playing well with other children, Lois puts him in day care to be around other children his age. With Stewie out of the house, Lois is bored so Brian suggests she get a job.
Peter seizes the opportunity to steer her to get a job as a flight attendant so he can get free travel. With Glenn Quagmire’s connection, Lois gets the job. The work is hard and she has to take abuse from the passengers—meanwhile, Peter takes a day trip to Australia.
Overhearing Peter boast about his free travel, she drags him into a lavatory to discuss him using her. While they’re occupied, the plane is hijacked to Cuba. Unable to get documents to return to the US, they ride a refugee raft to Florida.
Meanwhile, at the day care center Stewie falls in love with a toddler named Janet despite his best efforts. Giving in, he decides to woo her. For example, he serenades Janet with Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young.” The one-sided relationship is rocky. In the end, he is heartbroken when he discovers she only wanted his cookies.
Notes
- After Stewie is finished talking to his teddy bear, Brian appears leaning against the wall eating an apple and says, "Well, well, well, looks like someone's in love." The same situation is depicted in Brian in Love, but with Stewie listening in on Brian.
- The evil monkey in Chris's closet makes his first appearance in this episode.
- The theme music used for "The Communists" TV show is the same theme music that the genie grants to Peter in Family Guy Viewer Mail #1.
- The Arab character on the flight said to Lois: "mumkin tikooni mirati (ممكن تكوني مراتي)", which is real Arabic for "Will you be my wife?".
Cultural references
- Stewie drops a kid into a pit, walks away, and sings, “Steve walks warily down the street, with his brim pulled way down low,” the first line from Queen’s song “Another One Bites the Dust.”
- Peter talks about how he got in trouble as a kid, and we cut to a scene of the classic Dr. Seuss character, The Cat in the Hat, offering to clean up the house. Peter says “No, no, just go. It’ll be funny!” In the original book, the cat wrecked the house, then cleaned it up in a matter of seconds before the children’s parents got home.
- When Lois asks Peter and Chris “What will the neighbors think?” we see a woman yell “Abner! Abner! The Griffin boy just killed a plastic reindeer!” The neighbors are Mr. and Mrs. Kravitz from the old TV show Bewitched where Mrs. Kravitz would always see witchcraft being used and fails to convince her husband, Abner. We then see Mr. Kravitz sitting naked on the couch with a bowl of popcorn covering his genitals. He says “Gladys, it took me over two hours to work up the courage to rent this porno. Now are you gonna watch it with me or not?”
- Lois’ exciting life involved meeting Kim Richards who played Tia Malone in Escape to Witch Mountain and Return from Witch Mountain. (Lois conflates the titles to Escape from Witch Mountain.)
- After getting free air travel, Peter dumps Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.
- Peter mentions traveling to Kentucky and to KFC, unaware that the latter's founder, Colonel Sanders, is dead.
- The scene in which the pilots pretend to be dead, to Lois’s horror, is another reference to Airport 1975 (previously referenced in the episode “Death is a Bitch”).
- When Peter asks Lois, “What if Kurt Cobain had quit?” the scene cuts to a Nirvana concert where Kurt tells the audience “Say no to drugs!” It’s revealed that if he quit, he would have made seven albums rather than just four.
- Stewie spies on Janet using Luke Skywalker's binoculars.
- A cutaway to a fictional sitcom called The Communists shows a Soviet family that lives in the only red house in the neighborhood. At the dinner table, when the father asks his son about his grades, he stalls, so the mother says: “Quit stallin’ [Stalin]).” She then adds: “Tell us your marks [Karl Marx]).” The boy says: “Do I Khrushchev?”, at which point Nikita Khrushchev enters saying “Did somebody say Khrushchev?” and dances on the dinner table to techno music, with the family joining along.
- While in Cuba, Peter and Lois shop at a literal black market.
- When playing Duck, Duck, Goose, Stewie tells Jannet to "Quit your boo-hooing!" This is a reference to My Fair Lady
References
- S. Callaghan, “Dammit Janet!” Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1–3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 100–102.
- A. Delarte, “Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 2” in Bob’s Poetry Magazine, 2.May 2005: 21–22 http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02My.pdf
