Family Guy: 5 Episodes With Terrible Lessons

Domestic violence is a touchy subject and finding the right way to deal with it can be difficult. Luckily for Family Guy, they were content with handling it in the worst way possible.

After Quagmire is hospitalized in an accident fitting only Quagmire, he is visited by his sister Brenda and her abusive boyfriend Jeff. After a failed intervention and Brenda announcing her pregnancy, Quagmire, Peter and Joe agree to kill Jeff and dump his body in the woods. After Jeff discovers the plot, he has a fight with Quagmire which ends with Jeff dying a brutal death when Quagmire rams him with Peter's car.

Addressing domestic abuse is often complicated and there probably isn't a universal way to resolve the problem. However, the wrong ways to handle it are far more clear and premediated murder has to be at the top of that list. Jeff was clearly a jerk that deserved punishment, but killing the guy felt irredeemable.

This episode understandably caught some heat from various organizations for its portrayal of domestic abuse victims, but it deserved as much flack for their solution to this kind of violence. Maybe Family Guy was aiming for catharsis more than an applicable lesson, but the episode made a statement, inadvertent or otherwise.

Family Guy doesn't do nuance particularly well and Screams of Silence is perhaps the clearest example to date.