Three Kings

To the other reviewer who wondered how could Roy Scheider have done this episode when he's been dead for almost a year and a half,...well, gee, the voice tracks for cartoons are often done months & sometimes 1 year or more in advance and perhaps Seth and the gang at Family Guy decided to delay this episode until now. This episode is uneven and not the best they ever did at Family Guy, but I love seeing parodies of other peoples' work and man, did they skewer Stephen King in this one! I, too was surprised to see that this episode has the late Roy Scheider's voice in it, but it was pretty cool to hear him one last time as this is this final TV 'appearance'. He still has one film yet to be released, apparently.

Unbelievable. This series keeps getting better while THE SIMPSONS keeps jumping shark after shark. The episode has Peter telling his version of three Stephen King stories, but clearly based on the movie adaptations and with little or no knowledge of the printed source material. Adults will get this, youngsters may not. By far the best tale is Peter's take on SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, but you will want to see all three tales because they all have plenty to make you laugh out loud. The episode's right up there with MacFarlane's two-part send-up of STAR WARS. Among the celebrity voices: Richard Dreyfuss, George Wendt and Roy Scheider. And watch for the River/"Jack" Phoenix gag. It is an absolute killer. MacFarlane clearly belongs in an institution. I was shocked to discover just today he is from a small Connecticut town not too far from where I grew up. This is not a guy you would want for a neighbor, believe me. But he is very, very funny in a totally insane way..

OK how does this episode work? I understand what the episode actually is that's not what I'm talking about, but how in the crap does Roy Scheider do voice work for this episode since he's been dead now for oh I don't know over a year. Almost 16 months this man is dead and they list him as playing himself. I'm just wondering how this thing works. That's all, usually things don't get to me but this one did. OK that's my two-cents and that's all. Other than this stuff above it was a cool episode. Keep'em coming Seth. This is by far the best spoof that they's done yet and oh man, making Peter fart like that was great. And I have to say that I love the way they have Joe get his legs broken in each story. I have to say the Misery story alone, they tossed Joe in that segment just to paralyze him and kill him of course. It was still a great episode, I can't wait to see the next thing they do when it comes to spoofing outside Family Guy ideas. I enjoyed it when it's all said and done.

Three Kings is divided into three parts, spoofing three movies based on Stephen King books--Stand By Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption. The first two weren't funny, they just generalized the plot with Family Guy characters. There was nothing that made it even remotely like a Family Guy episode. The Stand By Me segment just kept emphasizing the differences between the fifties and now, and Misery had just a couple humorous lines, relying on the fact that they are parodying King to keep the viewer interested. The last segment, however, The Shawshank Redemption,was hysterical. It utilized all of the standard Family Guy traits and infused them into the Shawshank storyline.

This is the least funny Family Guy I've ever seen. I suppose it depends if you like full on parodies. Which I don't. It's the laziest simplest form of comedy. Family Guy is usually way above that. Yes the show is full of short parody segments and references to various shows and films. But to make an entire show a parody of just Stephen King was tedious and indulgent and very lazy. It wouldn't have been so bad if the endless parody had been funny but it wasn't. As my wife said 'It's the sort of thing The Simpsons would do'. They can do much better than that. And usually do. Thankfully the rest of the series has been mostly superb.