Family Guy Chris and Meg School Fight Episode

When Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy first hit Fox's airwaves, it was criticized as a pale imitation of The Simpsons. The show's drunk, overweight, blue-collar father, underappreciated housewife, and three kids made it a shallow rip-off of The Simpsons with cutaways. However, as it evolved into its own thing and developed its own sense of humor, Family Guy carved a unique niche as the much darker cousin of The Simpsons.

Family Guy's willingness to go to much more offensive and challenging places than The Simpsons, exploring dicier themes and pushing the boundaries of network television, has resulted in these dark installments of the show.

10 Seahorse Seashell Party

When Fox did a crossover event with hurricane-themed episodes of Family Guy, American Dad!, and The Cleveland Show, Family Guy's entry in the "Night of the Hurricane" pantheon took a strange turn. Stuck in the house during the storm, Brian decides to take magic mushrooms and has a really bad trip.

There's a lot of fun to be had with the surrealist animation as Brian hallucinates and Stewie helps him through it, but it's more disturbing than funny.

9 Stewie Is Enceinte

When he becomes worried that he and Brian are drifting apart in "Stewie is Enceinte," Stewie secretly takes some of the dog's DNA and impregnates himself with it. Eventually, a bunch of dog-baby hybrids pop out of him.

Brian and Stewie end up with way more kids than they can handle. Most of them have birth defects, necessitating round-the-clock care that the ill-prepared parents can't afford. Eventually, they ditch their kids at an animal shelter.

8 Trading Places

Chris works at the brewery and Meg becomes a homemaker while Peter and Lois go to high school in "Trading Places," in order to determine whether it's easier to be an adult or a kid. Chris ends up being so good at Peter's job that he's hired permanently.

However, the stress of being the breadwinner of the house at such a young age gets to Chris and he starts drinking heavily, having heart palpitations, and verbally abusing his family at every opportunity.

7 Partial Terms Of Endearment

While it is available on home media, "Partial Terms of Endearment" has never been allowed to air in the United States. Fox refused to broadcast the episode and requested that Adult Swim not air it, either. Ironically, this drew way more attention to the episode than if Fox had just aired it.

In the episode, Lois is asked by friends to be a surrogate mother. She gets pregnant, then the friends who were going to raise the baby die, so Lois has to decide whether to raise it herself or get an abortion.

6 Halloween On Spooner Street

Chris and Meg go to a party with the hopes of finding someone to hook up with in "Halloween on Spooner Street." The only issue is that they unwittingly hooked up with each other because they were in a dark closet.

At the end of the episode, after being initially horrified by the revelation, they decide to just enjoy the fact that they hooked up, despite it being incestuous.

5 Brian & Stewie

The titular duo gets trapped in a bank vault over a weekend in "Brian & Stewie," the extra-long 150th episode of the series. The lack of cutaway gags and location changes puts the focus squarely on the characters, allowing for some uncharacteristic soul-searching.

The darkest point in the episode is when Stewie finds a gun in Brian's safety deposit box and Brian reveals that he keeps it in case he ever wants to kill himself.

4 Turban Cowboy

Peter befriends a Muslim man named Mahmoud in "Turban Cowboy," and since this is Family Guy and the most offensive stereotypes are indulged at every turn, Mahmoud turns out to be a radical extremist plotting a terrorist attack.

To make this episode even darker, it also has a gag about Peter killing a bunch of people at the Boston Marathon, and it aired just a couple of weeks before the tragic Boston Marathon bombings.

3 Send In Stewie, Please

Ian McKellen guest-starred as a child therapist who was appointed to counsel Stewie after an altercation with one of his classmates in "Send in Stewie, Please." The whole episode takes place in the therapist's office, beginning with Stewie deducing everything about the therapist's personal life from the personal effects around the room.

Throughout the episode, the therapist gets Stewie to open up and reveal that he puts on his pseudo-British accent. However, Stewie doesn't like someone knowing his secret and decides not to save the therapist when he starts dying.

2 A Shot In The Dark

Taking inspiration from the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin, "A Shot in the Dark" begins with Peter setting up a neighborhood watch organization and accidentally shooting Cleveland, Jr. when he thought he was breaking into his own house.

The ensuing court case in which Carter's lawyers do everything in their power to discredit Cleveland, Jr. is a poignant — if unsubtle — take on how the justice system handles these alarmingly frequent cases.

1 Screams Of Silence: The Story Of Brenda Q

Widely regarded to be one of Family Guy's worst episodes, "Screams of Silence: The Story of Brenda Q" revolves around Quagmire's sister's physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her fiancé. It's Always Sunny alum Kaitlin Olson was squandered with a guest spot in an episode that has no redeeming comedic value.

Whenever Family Guy tries to get serious, it falls flat horribly, and that's exactly what happens in "Screams of Silence." The episode oversimplifies its subject matter and presents all the wrong messages.

NEXT: South Park's 10 Darkest Episodes, Ranked

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About The Author

Ben Sherlock (3166 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, and independent filmmaker. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant, covering Mando, Melville, Mad Max, and more. He's currently in pre-production on his first feature, and has been for a while because filmmaking is expensive. In the meantime, he's sitting on a mountain of unproduced screenplays. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time.

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Family Guy Chris and Meg School Fight Episode

Source: https://screenrant.com/family-guy-most-disturbing-upsetting-episodes-ranked/

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