The 9th installment of Family Guy arrives in the UK tomorrow (1st of November 2010), and sees Peter, Louis, Stewie, Brian, Chris (and Meg), back for another bunch of crazy adventures. Confusingly the Family Guy DVD ‘seasons’ run differently to the Family Guy tv airing. The Family Guy Season 9 DVD is actually the 2nd half of season 7, and the 1st half of season 8. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve gone down the route of naming the DVD ‘seasons’ rather than ‘volumes’, but then it is released by FOX, which should explain somewhat why it makes absolutely no sense…
Despite the wacky naming conventions, the season 9 3 disc set does include some great episodes. Season 7 episode ‘3 Kings’ shows Family Guy parodying the classic movies Stand by Me, Misery and The Shawshank Redemption, with guest voices from Richard Dreyfuss and the late Roy Scheider. Season 8 episode ‘Hannah Banana’ not only sees Stewie become obssesed with Hannah Montana who’s coming to give a concert in Quahog, but also brilliantly reveals the origins of evil monkey from Chris’s coset.
The stand out episode for me though is the season 8 opener, ‘Road to the Multiverse’. This episode sees Stewie and Brian travelling through parallel universes seeing varying versions of Quahog and the Griffin family. Along with finding a universe where Christianity didn’t exist, and a universe where humans are subservient to dogs, I just loved the changes in art styles as they change worlds. They jump from a Flintstonesque Hanna-Barbera universe, to a stunningly drawn Disneyesque world, to the twisted universe of Seth Green’s (voice of Chris Griffin) ‘Robot Chicken’, all superbly animated.
All 15 episodes on the Family Guy Season 9 DVD are extended with too rude for TV scenes. The discs also include 48 deleted scenes, a Road to the Multiverse featurette and 12 creator, cast and artist commentaries.
For clarity, the episodes on the ‘Family Guy: Season 9 DVD’ are as follows:
Season 7 – episodes 10-16
- Fox-y Lady
- Not All Dogs Go To Heaven
- Episode 420
- Stew-Roids
- We Love You Conrad
- Three Kings
- Peter’s Progress
Season 8 – episodes 1-8
- Road to The Multiverse
- Family Goy
- Spies Reminiscent of Us
- Brian’s Got a Brand New Bag
- Hannah Banana
- Quagmire’s Baby
- Jerome is The New Black
- Dog Gone
Buy Family Guy Season 9 on DVD now!