Family Guy

“Peter’s Sister”
Season 14, Episode 6
11/15/2015

Here’s a Family Guy wrestling episode that gets kickstarted by a Thanksgiving family reunion.

For the uninitiated, Family Guy is what The Simpsons would be like if the writers decided to phone it in four days out of the week. And its crass humor is oftentimes compared to South Park, if the whole point of South Park was to simply say inappropriate shit for the simple reason of saying inappropriate shit with no subtext whatsoever. The family is made up of Peter Griffin, the overweight buffoon of a dad; Lois, his out of his league wife; Meg, the teenage daughter nobody cares about; Chris, the teenage overweight idiot son; and Stewie, the fiendish infant who’s smarter than everyone. There’s also a bunch of cutaway gags.

On the eve of Thanksgiving, Peter, receives a letter from his estranged sister, Karen. She notes in her letter that she’s decided to stop by for Thanksgiving. Peter isn’t too happy about it, even though Lois talks him into letting her visit. When Karen shows up, she’s even larger than Peter, but muscular, sports a mullet, drives a pick-up truck, and is generally your stereotypical run-of-the-mill butch lesbian. At least, in appearance. Her sexual orientation isn’t brought up during the show. Thankfully.

She makes a hell of a first impression on Peter’s friends (Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe) by punking Peter, which includes punching him in the nuts. The low blow apparently triggers Peter’s friends’ memories and they all instantly recognize her as “that lady wrestler,” who happens to go by the very appropriate Family Guy name for a female wrestler, Heavy Flow.

Naturally, we cut to a previous promo that Karen gives as Heavy Flow about her opponent, Andrea the Giant (on the nose, but a way better name). The best part about this bit is that the timing of the promo comes right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not that there’s anything hilarious about that tragedy, but there is some humor in how it spoofs professional wrestling (read: WWE) and their sincerity when it comes to milking tragic events and weaving them into storylines or promos. But the even better part about that promo was the interviewer who resembled “Mean” Gene Okerlund, who should always be the go-to inspiration for any fictional pro wrestling announcer/interviewer/commentator. Both animated or real. Always.

Back at Thanksgiving dinner, Karen proceeds to belittle Peter throughout the meal by telling embarrassing stories about him growing up. The guys ask Karen to show them some wrestling moves after dinner, like her finisher, the Toxic Shock. Because periods. Peter nixes the idea and instead reminds everyone that after dinner is their annual football game. During the game, Karen tackles Peter and decides to perform the move on him anyway. It’s surprisingly pretty inventive, and plausible in real life, as far as animated wrestling holds go.

The traumatic event leads Peter to piss his pants, which is what it finally takes for everyone to see that Karen is a bully to Peter. And we all know how wrestling and bullying go together. Quite well, actually. Later on, Meg, who’s constantly being bullied on the show by her father, tells Peter that he needs to stand up to Karen. Peter agrees that he should, but only as a female wrestler in a women’s wrestling match, because this is an animated sitcom, after all. He decides to call himself Maxi Patty, because, well… why wouldn’t he?

Peter’s friends help him train by hiring Steven Seagal, but mostly to get in some bits about Seagal being fat and acting Native American. They do other stuff, like taking pain killers, so Peter can start getting used to them, since everyone knows pro wrestlers become addicted to pain pills. Biting satire, this is.

We see that wrestling shows around Thanksgiving time are still a tradition at the local Quahog arena, as Karen makes an appearance as Heavy Flow. Sadly, it’s not as part of a team of four, taking on another team of four wrestlers, to see who will survive. Karen’s performing some crazy-looking flippy shit, like a 450 splash, which is pretty damn impressive for a woman her size. She happens to miss the 450, but no sells it, and goes right back to work on her opponent.

Unfortunately, we don’t get her opponent’s name, as one of the announcers claims to have forgotten it, but casually mentions that it’s probably some gross pun. Meta! But the other announcer is quick to reassure him by reminding him that Heavy Flow is in fact fighting Her Vajesty’s Secret Cervix. Karen puts Her Vajesty away with Sheamus’ White Noise finisher, instead of her highly publicized Toxic Shock move that’s been previously set up in this episode. But will no doubt pay off a little later on.

While Karen’s celebrating, Maxi Patty shows up, and calls out Heavy Flow, demanding that she fight her in order to truly claim her championship title. Despite Maxi Patty having no previous win-loss record, or vignettes, to set up this match or her debut. This isn’t even an open challenge from the champion. But just like that, the bout is made official, mimicking the real life nature of pro wrestling. Where sometimes real officials and contract signings are necessary to set up a match, and other times, wrestlers can simply book their own matches on the fly, so long as there’s a ref in the ring.

After some un-Family Guy-like PG trash talk, that includes Patty calling Karen yellow, the two siblings go at it. They waste little time beating the crap out of each other. If it’s one thing Family Guy does well, aside from hiring manatees to write their show, it’s producing long dragged-out fights. Karen gives Peter the dreaded TV wrestling move trope, the airplane spin, before Irish whipping him into the ropes for a waiting clothesline.

It doesn’t take long after that for Maxi Patty to reveal herself as Peter. Karen seems taken aback, but after Peter proclaims that he’s there to stop her from bullying him, she goes back on the attack. Because everyone knows you can’t reason with bullies. Karen throws a few punches before performing a German suplex so devastating that it whack-a-mole’s Peter’s head into his shoulders. After another Irish whip, Peter bounces off the ropes and this time nails Karen with his own massive frame.

Peter gains the upper hand until Karen takes to the ropes, leaps off and puts him in the Toxic Shock. The big pay off! Peter is about to pass out until a masked Meg shows up and slams Karen with a steel chair and pins her aunt. Her Aunt Flow, if you will. Get it? Family Guy joke, fuck yeah!

Meg not only claims the title, but proclaims herself Teen LaQueefah, because this isn’t stopping until the show’s over. The announcers announce the title change and one of them exclaims that this match is one for the books, “If anyone kept track of this nonsense.” And we all know nobody that works in professional wrestling, especially the WWE, ever does, except the diehard wrestling nerds who tune in every week and lose their shit over continuity issues.

Meg reveals herself to Peter, and he can’t figure out why the child he’s treated the worst is the one that saved him. And I’m sure he probably forgot about this a few episodes later when he probably farted on her on his way to the kitchen. Either way, he apologizes, and they hug.

A couple of days later, Lois asks Peter how Karen’s doing. He mentions that she’s still in a coma because Meg apparently used a real chair, whereas in wrestling the chairs are fake. I guess they don’t know where or how to blur the line when you take into account that Peter and Karen were really beating the crap out of each other in the ring. But when it comes to pro wrestling something has to be fake. Peter then gets a phone call asking for him to take a blood test to help Karen out, but he declines. All things considered, it was a weird roundabout way to give Peter’s bullying of Meg some kind of backstory origin.