Sibling Rivalry

"Sibling Rivalry"
Family Guy episode
Stewie and Bertram duel for control of the playground.
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 22
Written by	Cherry Chevapravatdumrong
Directed by	Dan Povenmire
Production no.	4ACX24
Original airdate	March 26, 2006
Guest stars
Wallace Shawn as Bertram Chris Wedge
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "I Take Thee Quagmire" "Deep Throats"
Family Guy (season 4) List of Family Guy episodes

"Sibling Rivalry" is the twenty-second episode of season four of Family Guy, and is a sequel to the season three episode "Emission Impossible." The episode first broadcast on March 26, 2006, and was written by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and directed by Dan Povenmire.^[1] The plot follows Stewie battling with his half-brother, Bertram, who is born to two lesbians after Peter donates sperm. Meanwhile, Lois begins excessive eating after Peter undergoes a vasectomy and loses his interest in sex.^[2]

Plot

After a pregnancy scare, Peter reluctantly agrees to get a vasectomy to prevent further repeats. Before the surgery, he agrees to donate sperm, should Lois and he ever decide to have another baby. While in the sperm bank, Peter accidentally destroys all the existing samples, and decides to replace them with his own to prevent himself from getting in to trouble. Nine months later, a lesbian couple, who took away some of Peter's sperm in order to conceive a child, give birth to Bertram, Stewie's half-brother who first appeared in the episode "Emission Impossible".

After the vasectomy, Peter's loses his sex drive, much to the frustration of Lois, who begins excessive eating as a resolution. Peter begins to ridicule Lois due to her weight, but stops shortly after they have sex and discover they prefer "fat sex", opposed to their regular sex. Peter attempts to make Lois fatter to feed his urges, but Lois suffers a heart attack during sex, and the doctors remove all of the fat from her body, and she returns to her normal weight.

Shortly after birth, Bertram As Voiced By Wallace Shawn declares a war with Stewie for control over the playground. They confront each other in the playground with airplanes and helicopters, firing numerous bullets at each other. After the air battle ends with no winners, Bertram resorts to biological warfare, and infects Stewie with chickenpox. After recovering, Stewie confronts Bertram, and they engage in a sword fight in the play area. Stewie eventually wins by disarming Bertram, who, according to Stewie later in the episode, appears that Stewie killed Bertram, but he is only planting a tree. Bertram actually ran away and admitted defeat.

Production

The song performed after Lois' pregnancy test comes back negative was written by Alec Sulkin and Alex Borstein, and sung by professional Hollywood studio singers.^[3] Orchestrations in this song were performed by Walter Murphy, and described by show producer Seth MacFarlane to be "wonderful".^[3] The sketch of Peter challenging Lois to a race to Boston was removed from television broadcasting in order to save time.^[4] As Lois is slowly racing Peter to Boston, a Shania Twain song can be heard on the radio; Dan Povenmire states on the DVD commentary that he often gets into trouble for adding pieces of music into an episode when they're so short, yet cost so much.^[5] The producers of both Family Guy and the Ice Age series agreed to collaborate in the episode during its reference to Scrat from the Ice Age series.^[3]

There was discussion among the producers of the series regarding whether Bertram should be included in the storyline, as he had not appeared in any episodes for several years.^[4] An un-used scene was intended for broadcasting which showed Stewie, while reading Where's Waldo?, saying to Brian "Oh, turn to the next page. I bet they put him in someone's utility pocket", but it was never used as it wasn't deemed funny enough for the episode.^[3] Originally, Peter singing "Milkshake" to inmates at a prison was going to be naked and push his nipples from underneath, but broadcasting standards objected; as a result, the show broadcasting Peter wearing underpants and pushing his nipples from the side.^[3][5] When Peter and Lois are in the restaurant and Peter leaves to "warn the chef of Lois' arrival", Lois was intended to say "If he won't put something in me, I will", but the gag was never broadcast.^[5]

The unsafe homeless man with whom Peter was seen leaving a youth-baseball team in Stewie's flashback was originally based on John Wayne Gacy, but people claimed he didn't look scary enough, so Povenmire changed the character completely to that of a homeless-man.^[5] The idea of Stewie and Bertram laughing as they go down the slide during their sword fight was pitched by Povenmire's wife and, although negative about the idea at first, Povenmire included it in the episode because the original sketch not going so well.^[5] During Peter and Lois' "fat sex", Peter repeatedly states "almost, almost"; originally, there was going to be approximately twice as many of these, but they were never included in the episode.^[3] The DVD version of the episode shows Peter arriving at the sperm bank and saying to the receptionist: "I have an appointment to banish a White Russian from my Kremlin", to which she replies with "This is a sperm bank, you don't have to use innuendo", and Peter concludes the conversation with "Where do I splooge?".^[3][5]

Cultural references

• When Peter and Lois go to the restaurant, Peter has a flashback to an embarrassing situation when he had to entertain prison inmates with a humiliating rendition and mime to the song Milkshake. This short scene has become very well-known as a fan favourite.
• When in the children's park, Stewie quotes "Did ya get me my Cheez Whiz, boy" and a man throws one to him; this is a reference to The Blues Brothers.^[3]
• Stewie and Brian attempting to find diversity in an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue is a reference to the children's books series Where's Waldo?.^[5]
• An Ice Age reference is made when Scrat, a character from the films, attempts to steal Peter's nuts after he had his testicles cryogenically frozen during a cutaway-gag.^[3]
• Morgan Freeman (not played by himself) is heard narrating on the apparently autobiographical film 'The Narrator' - a nod to his reputation for powerful narration in movies such as The Shawshank Redemption (which contains the line "You either get busy living or you get busy dying," which "Freeman" says in this bit) and The March of the Penguins, among others.
• When Bertram says, "I sense something, a presence I've not felt since..." is a reference to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
• Stewie plants a tree with Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos, at one point saying "Thank you Mr.Moltisanti".

Reception

"Sibling Rivalry" was watched by 7.95 million viewers, making it the 77th most-watched program of the week.^[6] In a review of the episode, Bob Sassone of TV Squad noted "If there's one reason I'm glad I watched tonight's episode it's because I learned exactly how a vasectomy is done," adding that "Peter is going to have a vasectomy, so he decides to freeze his sperm before he does it. This leads to a hysterical, yet truly gross, scene where Peter knocks over an entire shelf of sperm samples, and has to refill them, um, himself."^[7] Geoffrey D. Roberts of Real Talk Reviews reviewed the episode negatively, writing "Also, many viewers will probably be disappointed with an episode about sibling rivalry between Stewie and newfound half-brother Bertram. Both share the same goal – to rule the Universe. With Bertram nothing more than a whinier version of his half-brother, it turns out one Stewie Griffin is more than enough."^[8]

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Sibling Rivalry

• "Sibling Rivalry" at TV.com
• "Sibling Rivalry" at the Internet Movie Database
• Sibling Rivalry on Family Guy Wiki, an external wiki