Baking Bad

"Baking Bad" is the third episode of the thirteenth season of the animated sitcom Family Guy, and the 234th episode overall. It aired on Fox in the United States on October 19, 2014, and is written by Mark Hentemann and directed by Jerry Langford. In the episode, Peter starts a cookie store with Lois while Stewie develops a drinking problem after Brian gives him cough medicine to help him sleep.^[1] The title is a play on the television series Breaking Bad.

Plot

Tom Tucker reports on the news about an earthquake that struck Haiti. After seeing the news, Lois organizes a blood drive. Peter was reluctant to give blood until he notices that by doing so he would receive cookies that Lois had made using one of her grandmother's recipes. After Lois convinces Peter to donate blood where he doesn't even feel the needle during the process, Peter enjoys the cookie so much he encourages her to open a cookie store together. Going to the bank to get a loan, their cookies win over the bank manager Cookie Monster who gives the loan officer the approval to let Peter and Lois open a cookie shop. After acquiring a shop they call "Peter's Wife's Cookies," they find that business is not as steady as they had hoped.

Meanwhile, Stewie has trouble sleeping when Lois is not around to tell him a bedtime story and not even the Sandman can get him to sleep. To remedy this, Brian slips him some cough medicine so the alcohol will help him. However, Stewie becomes drunk from abusing the medicine and starts acting ridiculously.

At the Drunken Clam, Peter asks Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe on how to improve the cookie shop. Taking Quagmire's advice that "sex sells", Lois finds that Peter has employed bikini beauties to work the shop as Lois is introduced to Cookie, Sugar, Spice, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar, and Butter. Lois is upset until she finds that the idea has made a lot of money and reluctantly agrees to go along with it. Peter takes the stunt to the extreme by turning the cookie store into a strip club, which crosses the line for Lois and she quits.

Stewie gets into a drunken Big Wheel accident and injures another child. The next day, he arrives home to find Brian and his toys have arranged an intervention after he nearly killed another kid. After successfully taking care of Stewie, Brian has to break up a masturbation intervention he held for Chris because all his friends were sitting in a circle.

An apologetic Peter arrives home and admits he was wrong. He also brings Lois a personalized cookie as well. Peter suggests that they not eat it since Butter helped and she has Chlamydia in her fingers. Lois gets out of the loan by turning the shop back over to the bank. The final scene shows Cookie Monster at the cookie shop nibbling on Cookie's breasts.

Production

This is the final episode to be written by longtime executive producer and writer Mark Hentemann who left the series after completion of this episode to work on his own series Bordertown.

In a cutaway, Peter eats the hair of Connie Britton, who voices herself. Family Guy executive producer Steve Callaghan said “Especially if you saw her in Friday Night Lights, her hair just looks so yummy, you want to take a bite of it.”^[2]

Reception

The episode received an audience of 4.74 million, making it the fourth most watched show on Fox that night, after The OT, The Simpsons and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.^[3] The Parents Television Council, a conservative analyst group founded by long-time critic of Family Guy L. Brent Bozell III, named the episode as the "Worst of the Week" due to its themes of Peter using strippers to promote his business and Stewie becoming an alcoholic.^[4]

References