Stewie Kills Lois and Lois Kills Stewie

"Stewie Kills Lois/Lois Kills Stewie"
Family Guy episode
Promotional poster for "Stewie Kills Lois"
Episode no.	Season 6 Episode 4 and 5
Written by	David A. Goodman (Part 1) Steve Callaghan (Part 2)
Directed by	John Holmquist (Part 1) Greg Colton (Part 2)
Production no.	5ACX17 and 5ACX18
Original airdate	November 4 and November 11, 2007
Guest stars
Simon Cowell as Himself Paula Abdul as Herself Randy Jackson as Himself Patrick Stewart as Avery Bullock
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "Believe It or Not, Joe's Walking on Air" "Padre de Familia"
Family Guy (season 6) List of Family Guy episodes

"Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie" are a two-part episode of Family Guy that first aired on Fox two weeks in a row with Part 1 airing on November 4 and Part 2 airing on November 11, 2007. Part 1 is the 100th episode of the series, with Stewie believing he finally killed his mother Lois, only to discover she isn't really dead. Part 2 involves Stewie on the run after being exposed as the homicidal baby he is, but he soon fulfills his dream of world domination. It also features a crossover with American Dad!, another series created by Seth MacFarlane, where Stewie encounters Stan Smith and Avery Bullock at the CIA.

Plot

Stewie Kills Lois

The episode opens with the family at a dinner celebrating Lois' birthday; the family gives her mediocre gifts. To their displeasure, Brian gives Lois a pair of tickets for a cruise, which she assumes are for her and Peter (Brian, of course, intended otherwise). Stewie is greatly upset at not getting to go; as soon as he returns home, he concocts a diabolical plan to humiliate Lois, which he intends to carry out as soon as she returns. Brian scoffs, noting that Stewie has never followed through with any of his diabolical plans before, and is completely skeptical that he will do so this time. Stewie realizes that Brian is right, so he decides to take immediate action to rectify the problem.

Lois mere moments before her attempted murder by Stewie.

Meanwhile, on the ship, Peter proves to be a continual embarrassment to Lois: he poops on the poop deck, thinks Philip Seymour Hoffman, (not Kate Winslet), played Rose in Titanic opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, and tells a story at the captain's table about how they almost aborted the fetus that would become Meg. A humiliated Lois rages at Peter when they are alone; when she's finished, she goes out on the deck. At this time, Stewie, who has made his way onto the ship via a speedboat, finds and confronts Lois. Completely astonished to see Stewie, Lois wonders how he came on board without her knowing. Stewie then pulls out an Uzi and, after remarking he should have done this long ago, opens fire. Lois' chest is graphically riddled with bullets. The final bullet pierces her heart and she falls overboard, her body plunging and sinking deep into the ocean's abyss....Stewie is ecstatic that he has finally killed his mother.

Six days later, Lois is considered missing and Stewie is elated to discover that no one suspects foul play as the other Griffins begin to worry. Since she has been missing for so long, Joe tells a distressed Peter that the search for her has been called off and he must now accept the fact that Lois is gone.

A year passes and the Griffins have managed to move on with their lives: Peter begins dating other people; Chris has been led to believe that Lois is merely away at a health spa; and Meg, as Stewie states, has really begun to flourish after Lois' murder. Brian restates that her death was an accident, but Stewie counters by saying that was what everyone was led to believe. Greatly disturbed by this revelation, Brian realizes that Stewie actually carried out his plan, and vows to bring him to justice.

At The Drunken Clam, Peter mentions to his friends that his wife's life insurance has finally paid out. He casts much suspicion on himself by noting that he took out the policy while they were on the ship, just after having secretly wished she were dead after their fight. Meanwhile, Stewie realizes that keeping evidence of his crime as mementos is too risky with Brian snooping around, and throws into the trash his gun and his drawings depicting Lois getting killed in various ways. Joe and the others search the trash and find these items just after Stewie disposes of them. This proves serendipitous however, as Joe and the others think that Peter made them, and are forced to accept Peter as the killer. Noticing the coincidence, Stewie is ecstatic now that it appears that he's indeed pulled off the "perfect murder."

Peter is brought into the police station for questioning where Joe reluctantly informs Peter that he is the prime suspect for Lois' murder and that things look bleak for him. At his trial, Brian does everything in his power to keep Meg and Chris from believing he killed their mother. The prosecutor manages to get Peter to reveal things that would make it seem obvious as to why he would kill her, albeit perhaps unintentionally (such as drinking, striking her periodically, and being aggressive in nature). Peter is found guilty of murder in the first degree and is almost sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Before the judge can bang his gavel to make the sentence, a mysterious figure enters the courtroom — it's Lois herself, very much alive. The Griffins are relieved and overjoyed to find she is safe and that Peter didn't kill her. After happily reuniting with her family, Lois implicates Stewie as her would-be killer.

Lois Kills Stewie

Everyone is confused at the idea that Stewie would try to kill Lois, but Lois insists that he is evil and begins to explain what happened to her. After being shot by Stewie and falling overboard, she was rescued by a merman and nursed back to life. She found herself suffering from amnesia and aimlessly wandered the country, eventually ending up at a fat camp in North Carolina, where she was hired as a counselor. A few months later, Lois met and hooked up with a young man who initially seemed very nice, though it turned out he was actually a white supremacist. He took her to a convention, she spoke out against them, and an enraged attendee threw a bottle at her which struck her on the head. The impact caused her to regain her memory, and she rushed back to Quahog. As soon as she finishes her story, everyone notices that Stewie has escaped. Joe initiates a manhunt around town to track down Stewie, though his team has little luck.

When the Griffins return home, Stewie is waiting for them--armed with a gun. Knowing that his crime and maliciousness are no longer a secret to the Griffins (or, indeed, all of Quahog), he restrains them (and also humiliates Brian and beats Peter) while he forms a plan. When Cleveland casually walks into the house, Stewie shoots and kills him in front of the terrified family. Realizing that neither the police nor the press would ever overlook a black man's disappearance, Stewie ties the family to chairs in the living room (with Cleveland's body stuffed under the couch cushions) and forces Brian to drive him to the CIA Headquarters.

Posing as an agent, Stewie gains access to the CIA's supercomputer and takes control of the planet's power grid. Stan Smith and Avery Bullock attempt to intervene, but find themselves helpless against Stewie's threat to rid the world of electricity and fulfill his demands to become "President of the World." As he broadcasts all of his oppressive new laws across the planet on the news from the White House (which include the banning of straight to DVD movies, insisting America's milk must now come from Hilary Swank's breasts and making it compulsory for people to throw apples at Peter on sight), Lois becomes enraged with his tyrannical reign. Realizing what she must do, she arms herself with various weapons from Stewie's reserve and heads out to assassinate her baby.

Lois and Stewie's "final battle."

Lois crashes through the window in the Oval Office at the White House and confronts Stewie. Stewie is armed with his own arsenal of weapons and they clash in a violent, drawn-out battle. Lois eventually gains the upper hand and prepares to shoot Stewie with her shotgun as Stewie spurs her on. Lois ultimately realizes that although he is evil, he is still her baby and she could never bring herself to kill him: however, Stewie has no such qualms and seizes the gun from his mother. Just as Stewie is about to kill her, he is suddenly shot twice by Peter. Peter and Lois loom over Stewie's mangled corpse and hold each other brokenheartedly in silence over the loss of their son, despite everything that's happened, and Peter closes Stewie's empty eyes before leaving.

The words "SIMULATION OVER" suddenly pop up on the screen.

The scene pulls away to Stewie sitting in a strange chair-like device. Brian comes into the room with postcards from Peter and Lois that say they are having fun on their cruise, when he finds Stewie coming out of the device. It is revealed that most of the events from the past two episodes were actually a computer simulation. Stewie was watching to see how attempting to kill Lois would pan out for him after being told by Brian that he never would go through with it. In other words, "it was all a dream." Stewie tells Brian things didn't work out so well for him in the simulation, and that his plans of matricide and world domination will have to wait. They go off on a tangent about how the "dream sequence" may "piss a lot of people off" who were potentially watching it, saying it would be like a "giant middle finger to them." Stewie insists that at least it didn't cut off in mid-sentence like The Sopranos. He is then cut off in midsentence when the screen becomes black (thus mimicking The Sopranos' finale.)

Cultural references

The story of how Lois survived references Throw Momma From the Train.

"Family Guy"/"American Dad!" crossover

Stan Smith faces Stewie in a standoff while Avery Bullock holds Brian at gunpoint.

Stan Smith and Avery Bullock from American Dad! make a prominent crossover appearance in this episode. When Stan and Bullock aim their guns at Stewie and Brian, Stewie mistakes Stan for Joe Swanson, since both shows are made by the same people; therefore the characters are sometimes similar in appearance. Stan and Bullock are voiced by their usual respective actors from the show, creator Seth MacFarlane and guest star Patrick Stewart.

At Comic-Con, after doing a table read for the American Dad! episode "The 42-Year-Old Virgin", there was a Q&A. Someone asked Seth MacFarlane if there were plans to do an American Dad!/Family Guy crossover where the Griffins would meet the Smiths. MacFarlane said there is currently none in the works, but American Dad! characters would appear in a Family Guy episode. This is the one to which he referred.^{[citation needed]}

The crossover of these two Seth MacFarlane shows takes place at the CIA between the scene where Stewie hacks into the global power grid the moment Stan and Bullock show up, and the scene where he's officially the "President of the World."

Reception

Ahsan Haque of IGN rated "Stewie Kills Lois" a 9/10, while rating "Lois Kills Stewie" a 9.4/10, saying "For the hundredth episode of Family Guy, Seth McFarlane and friends tackle the subject of one of Stewie Griffin's greatest ambitions - his not-so-secret desire to kill his mother. For the disturbed fans waiting for some form of a matricidal manifestation, you can feel comfort knowing, without spoiling too much, that the youngest Griffin absolutely means business and ensures that he doesn't fail this time around. [...] There are some tense courtroom moments, a birthday celebration with the gift of Lionel Ritchie, a cruise ship, machine guns, and the reappearance of the Kool Aid Man that help round out this carefully crafted and well-told cohesive storyline. With the amount of cheap manatee jokes kept to a reasonable level, this episode also manages to find an excellent balance between comedy and storytelling. It's a fantastic way to celebrate the Family Guy one-hundredth episode milestone. [...] With the writers' strike in full effect, it seems that this might be the last new episode of Family Guy we'll be seeing for a while. It's a bittersweet way to end the abruptly short season as the quality is reminiscent of the series' brilliance from the early years and it seems like the show was really starting to hit its stride for the season. Hopefully the series will be able to live up to the high bar set by this two-part classic upon its eventual return." ^[1][2]

References