Wasted Talent

"Wasted Talent"
Family Guy episode
Lois discovers Peter's "muse."
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 20
Written by	Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman (teleplay) Dave Collard and Ken Goin (story)
Directed by	Bert Ring
Production no.	2ACX15
Original airdate	July 25, 2000
Guest stars
Michael McKean Adam Carolla as Death
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "The Story on Page One" "Fore Father"
Family Guy (season 2) List of Family Guy episodes

"Wasted Talent" is an episode, from the second season of the FOX animated series Family Guy, guest starring Adam Carolla as Death. It is the 27th episode of Family Guy.

Plot summary

Lois desperately searches for one piano student who can beat her rival Alexis Radcliffe's student at the piano competition.

Meanwhile, Peter drinks even more Pawtucket Patriot beer than usual in an attempt to find a hidden silver scroll and win a tour of the brewery. The next day, Joe finds the first silver scroll. Some time later, Tom Tucker finds the last scroll, causing Peter to give up. Tom later admits he made up the story about him finding the last scroll, and then puts a carnivorous earwig in his nose to make up for it. Peter decides to drink one more beer, which turns out to have the last silver scroll. Peter and Brian go to the brewery tour. Pawtucket Pat (Michael McKean) is seemingly killed on his front walkway, but the killer turns out to be Cheech Marin, hired to pull off a gag. Since the brewery is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and does not have wheelchair ramps, Joe is forced to leave the tour. After experiencing the "beer room", Peter and Brian split off from the group to try beer that never goes flat, in spite of Pat's warning that they haven't worked out all the kinks. When Pat finds Peter and Brian in the forbidden room, he curtly ejects them from the brewery.

Angry at Pawtucket Pat, Peter tries to get Lois's attention by playing the piano, showing that he can play piano perfectly when drunk. Lois decides to enter Peter as her student in the piano competition, and keeps him in a state of constant inebriation. Peter's piano repertoire is movie and TV show theme songs. At the competition, Peter is so drunk that he can't even find the piano. Lois has to turn him around to face the piano, then move him in a couple of inches to play in the correct key. Peter and Lois win first place, but Lois frets that she may have harmed his health for her own selfish need to win. Peter defensively tells her all of his brain cells are intact. But deep inside his brain, there is only one left, who has just broken his glasses.

Cultural references

• The final scene, showing Peter's solitary brain cell in despair after breaking his glasses, is an homage to the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last."
• The song that Pawtucket Pat sings while in the "beer room" ("Pure Inebriation") is a parody of the song "Pure Imagination", sung by Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
• At the competition, Mary Tyler Moore throws her hat in the air, in an homage to the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Peter performs the theme song of this show.
• Tom Tucker's lie about the last silver scroll is a parody of the Russian (Paraguayan in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) who falsely claimed to have found the last Golden Ticket.
• One of the scroll finders is Charlie Bucket and his grandfather.
• The end credits are run while Joe Harnell's "The Lonely Man" plays in homage to The Incredible Hulk. The sequence also shows Stewie hitch-hiking along the side of the freeway á la David Banner.
• This episode borrows strongly from "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory."

Reception

In his 2009 review, Ahsan Haque of IGN said that "Wasted Talent" has "decent quantity of hilarious moments" but it isn't as memorable as other episodes in season 2. He stated that the storyline isn't cohesive enough, and the scenes about the Pawtucket Patriot Brewery "take up a little too much screen time".^[1]

References

• S. Callaghan, “Wasted Talent.” Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1–3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 120–122.

External links

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