Married...with Cancer (Family Guy)

Married...with Cancer is the first episode of the 17th season of Family Guy. It aired September 30, 2018.

Plot
In Part One of a special two-part story, Brian quickly falls in love with a woman he meets named Jess, and finds out that she has cancer. When she learns she is terminally ill and does not have much longer to live, Brian decides to propose to her.

Why It Shouldn't Be Married with Cancer

 * 1) The episode uses the recycled and cliched "Brian dates a woman and then have the relationship which gets broken at the end" plot.
 * 2) Jess is a terrible character. Part of this though is due to how many characters in the show (usually the ones who end up with Brian) are one-dimensional.
 * 3) * Casey Wilson did a poor job voicing her when she was fat.
 * 4) The scenes with Brian yelling at the fourth wall on Fox's advertisements is not very funny (and also an insult to 9-1-1 fans).
 * 5) The title about being "married" with "cancer" is rather ridiculous, nonsensical and even hard to understand.
 * 6) The first half of the  episode is emotionally manipulative by having a woman Brian loves be terminally ill and right after they get married, the doctors announced that she is cured out of nowhere.
 * 7) The twist in the episode undermines Brian’s actual love of Jess by having him want a divorce immediately after he finds out she has been cured.
 * 8) The whole scene where Jess chokes on a chip to near-death with Brian refusing to help is very unsettling and hard to watch.
 * 9) The episode also recycles episode plots featuring Quagmire, most notably plots where he marries a woman and immediately tries to divorce her afterwards, only this time it is Brian and not Quagmire who is making these attempts.
 * 10) It feels like an on and off torture episode for Brian.
 * 11) The ending makes no sense; during Jess' funeral while Brian gives a speech, Jess for an unexplained reason somehow comes back to life after having a heart attack, which her mother calls it a miracle, and Brian starts crying because now he is forced to be married to Jess forever.
 * 12) The flatulence sounds get unbelievably annoying, including a part where we hear almost nothing but 30 seconds straight of flatulence covering up the dialogue.
 * 13) *It is not cute listening to women farting. It is disgusting.
 * 14) Continuity Error:  This episode airs after the episode “The Old Man And The Big C”, yet Brian and the other characters in the show have seemingly forgotten the fact that Carter found the cure for cancer.  This would have given Brian another opportunity to try to convince Carter to release the cure out to the public so he could help Jess yet Brian does not do that and it’s never explained why.  Had this episode acknowledged this, it would have forced Carter to see the consequences of his selfishness and possibly make him the main antagonist of the episode but this does not happen.
 * 15) This episode along with “Dead Dog Walking”,  only seem to exist so the writers can mock the criticism fans were making towards the show’s tendency to use emotional manipulation to gain ratings, having Brian be the central character for such episodes including “Life Of Brian” and “The D In Apartment 23” and making a multi-episode arc out of them.  It also seems to lash out at criticism fans made towards the cliched plot line the show uses featuring Brian dating the girl of the day and breaking up with said girl at the end. Overall this shows that the writers are refusing to listen to these criticisms  and that the writers can’t handle any form of criticism towards the show well.
 * 16) Because this episode advertises that Brian is finally going to get married along with the fact that the first half is emotionally manipulative, this episode can be considered to be yet another ratings trap performed by the show to get as many people to watch as possible.  This basically shows that the writers did not learn anything from the infamous “Life of Brain” episode.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) A few scenes are funny, like the boomerang scene for example.
 * 2) Before it's revealed Jess will live, Brian is a likable character.
 * 3) Brian's Snoopy-like "Waaaah" is hilarious, especially during the cutaway when he went to see The Peanuts Movie (despite being released in 2015).

Reception
The episode has a 6.5/10 rating on IMDb.

Trivia

 * This episode was going to mark the end of the Brian-Quagmire feud where Quagmire finally admits to Brian that, despite their differences, he's a good guy and he even calls him a pal, but other episodes like "Bri-Da" voided it.
 * The title is a reference to the FOX's first prime-time show, Married...with Children.

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