Road to Europe

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“Road to Europe”
Family Guy episode
Episode no.	Season 3 Episode 48
Guest stars	KISS, Andy Dick
Written by	Daniel Palladino
Directed by	Dan Povenmire
Production no.	3ACX13
Original airdate	February 7, 2002
Episode chronology
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"Stuck Together, Torn Apart"	"Family Guy Viewer Mail#1"
List of Family Guy episodes

"Road to Europe" (originally called European Road Show) is an episode of Family Guy guest starring the members of KISS (Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, and Paul Stanley) as themselves.

[edit] Plot summary

Stewie is entranced by a British TV programme called Jolly Farm Revue (a parody of children's shows such as the Teletubbies). Lamenting his future in Quahog, Stewie decides to travel to Jolly Farm and live there forever. He sneaks aboard a transatlantic flight, intending to travel to London and find the BBC (where Jolly Farm is filmed). Brian chases after him, only to discover that they have landed in Saudi Arabia instead. Stewie and Brian perform a musical number together as a diversion in order to steal a camel, which dies from exhaustion in the middle of the desert. At a nearby Comfort Inn, they steal a hot air balloon and gradually make their way to Vatican City, then travel by train from Switzerland to Munich and get inadvertently stoned in Amsterdam. Upon finally arriving at the BBC studios, Stewie is horrified to learn that there is no actual farm (As cresting up "Happy Hill" runs into the set, showing some lights) and his beloved characters are mere actors. (The story telling pig is an old man drawing pictures of an Owl and Mother Maggie using a "Chinese Basket", and Mother Maggie smoking a cigarette curses when she learns Stewie is in the studios). Disillusioned, he travels back home with Brian and replaces his love of Jolly Farm Revue with a love of "funky fruit hats".

Peter is overjoyed to hear about KISS-stock, a five-night set of concerts in New England by his favorite band. He and Lois dress in face paint and leather, and stand only feet from the stage. When Gene Simmons points the microphone at Lois, encouraging her to sing the next line of Rock and Roll All Night, Peter is humiliated to discover that she does not know the words. He accuses her of only pretending to be a KISS enthusiast, and they leave the concerts in disgrace. To punish himself, Peter stops at a Denny's on the way home, where KISS happens to have also stopped. Lois recognizes Chaim Witz, who she dated before he changed his name to Gene Simmons; Gene introduces her to the rest of the band, who have heard Gene's stories of "Loose Lois". Peter's faith in Lois is restored, and he proudly shares the news on public-access television that his wife did KISS.

[edit] Notes

• This is the second road trip episode for Brian and Stewie. The first was "Road to Rhode Island." The third is "Road to Rupert."
• While on a bus top tour of Munich, Germany, Brian notes that the tour company’s brochure includes no information on German history from 1939 to 1945 the time of the Third Reich, the tour guide claims that Germany went on vacation for those years. Brian and the tour guide also argue about German novelist Thomas Mann. The tour guide gets furious at the accusations Brian makes and says (in German) "You will sit down! You will shut up! You will not insult Germany!" whilst using the Nazi salute (which is, in fact, illegal in Germany). Although the vocabulary is right, the word order in his "you will not insult Germany" is incorrect. An English accent is also clearly audible, indicating that the voice is not from a Native German speaker.
• Near the end of the Munich scene, Brian mentions the beer halls, which the tour guide acknowledges. Many people miss this reference; Munich was home to Hitler's infamous and ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch.
• The BBC headquarters is depicted as a rectangular skyscraper. In fact, Television Centre is a low-rise, "6"-shaped building.

[edit] Cultural references

• After Lois can't find the right line, KISS sing Chattanooga Choo Choo.
• This episode's theme is similar to "Road to Rhode Island", a Brian/Stewie road-trip caper from Season 2. The starting credits are similar in style to the ones seen in Looney Tunes cartoons from the 1950s.
• This episode is a parody of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's movie Road to Morocco. Stewie and Brian's musical number parodies a similar number performed by Hope and Crosby in the movie.
• Dennis DeYoung, former lead singer of the band Styx, calls into to KISS Forum to badmouth KISS. The host threatens to play the Styx’s 1977 hit “Come Sail Away” and then KISS’ 1976 song “Detroit Rock City” to see how they compare.
• When sneaking onto the plane with the British family, Stewie gives a stream of mumblings to sound British. He references the London theater Royal Albert Hall, Big Ben, the London Underground subway system, the rock group the Dave Clark Five, Monty Python's Spam sketch, and “a baby’s arm holding an apple” (Lenny Bruce's description of an African-American man's penis^[1][2]).
• Stewie's quick two-armed salute before boarding the plane is a parody of U.S. President Richard Nixon's infamous salute to the public after he resigned in 1974.
• On the plane, Stewie and Brian appear to be seated next to 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney and comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Andy Dick after asking how the trip could get any worse. All of these comedians respond to this by saying lines that they have said previously.
• A peddler in the Arabian village advertises Dude, My Car is Not Where I Parked It But Praise Allah We Are Not Hurt, either an Arabic translation or remake of the 2000 comedy film Dude, Where's My Car?.
• During their musical number, Brian compares Stewie’s hair to that of Peanuts character Charlie Brown and Stewie compares Brian to Brown’s beagle Snoopy. The song also references Latin pop star Ricky Martin, French writer the Marquis de Sade and Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, a puppet character from Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The song also has Brian claiming that Stewie's gay, something which happens rather a lot in this show.
• Brian slices open the camel's belly to save Stewie from the cold, much like Han Solo did with his Tauntaun to warm Luke in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
• When learning that Middle Easterners only heard 1980s rock music recently, Stewie pities them once they have to “suffer through” Jesus Jones, a British band best known for the 1991 hit “Right Here, Right Now.” But in fact, in many middle eastern countries American pop music (at least, that of mostly well known singers) is well known and, in countries that have less strict sexual habits, as Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and (up to a point) Egypt, videos are sometimes parodiated by local singers.
• In Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, Stewie and Brian wander into De Wallen, its red light district where, due to the country’s drug laws, marijuana is freely smoked in coffee houses.
• Peter and Lois meet KISS at a Denny's restaurant.
• KISS' Ace Frehley is depicted as kind of slow in this episode. During the commercial for their tour, he interrupts Gene Simmons, saying "Rock and Roll!", prompting Gene to send him into the corner. Later, when the rest of the band are excited to see Lois, he blurts out, "My Grand Slam was supposed to be with sausage." This may be a reference to the fact he was once electrocuted on stage, as he sounds like someone who was struck by lightning.
• In the opening scene of Jolly Farm Revue the pig implies that the fictional series is set in Ipswich.
• In the Arabian marketplace, the camel salesman refers to one of the camels only being driven to Mosque on Sundays. Muslims go to Mosque on Fridays.

[edit] References

Preceded by "Stuck Together, Torn Apart"

Family Guy Episodes

Followed by "Family Guy Viewer Mail#1"