Family Guy Episode Analysis

In life, most actions produce reactions. If said actions elicit negative feelings towards the reactor, it can be concurred that a defensive reaction will take place. These defensive reactions take place all the time. To display this, I examined an episode from Seth Macfarlane’s Family Guy. The episode I watched was Once Bitten, season thirteen, episode sixteen. This particular episode started with The family dog Brian feeling ill, so after taking him into the veterinary clinic, they discovered that his liver was not working at full capacity. To counteract that, they prescribed him a bottle of pills. Little known to Brian, these particular pills came in strictly suppository form. When Peter first attempted to “feed” Brian his pill, Brian reacted in anger, biting Peter’s arm. This gave Brian a newfound sense of strength and power in the family, as he felt he was the new man of the house. To counteract his malicious behavior, Peter and his wife, Lois, shipped him off to obedience school. When he came back, he was a new dog. His behavior before the bite was fun and
To kick things off, Family Guy mocked Indiana Jones. Indy fell into a pit of snakes and exclaimed in a monotone voice “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes.” This was a famous line from Raiders of the Lost Ark. One of the snakes he fell in front of them replied to him “Elderly pot-heads, why did it have to be elderly pot-heads” This sassy snake used the Freudian displacement mechanism to defend himself from Indiana Jones. We know this because the snake was venting his anger from Jones’ hatred towards Jones who was the adversary in the scene. Displacement was also used in the scene in which Peter was attempting to give Brian the suppository pill. When Brian resisted and bit Peter, Peter was not only non-threatening, but also trying to help. This further proves the use of displacement in Family Guy