Family Guy – Season 21 Episode 2 “Bend or Blockbuster” Recap & Review

Bend or Blockbuster

Episode 2 of Family Guy Season 21 starts with Lois sending a message to her family to help unload groceries from her car. The Brown family immediately catches her attention as they play in their garden. 

Thinking of the Browns, she encourages her family to have family fun time – something that Peter mistakes for family-free fun time again and again because of a couple of obvious reasons. 

Lois kicks off family fun time with a card game. The game instructions are so long that Peter shoots himself and goes to Satan and back. Eventually, frustrated Peter calls a shot. He proposes the idea of watching movies the old-school way – renting a movie at Blockbuster and enjoying it on VCR. To their surprise, they can’t find any Blockbuster outlet.

Peter checks on his phone and that the only Blockbuster in existence is 2980 miles away. Yes, the Griffins are making a road trip. As usual, Peter drags his fam on his excruciatingly long road trip despite their reluctance. On their way, they encounter wild stuff leading Lois to satirically suggest Peter drive into a pond as that will be a quicker death than driving so long. 

The Griffins eventually find a Blockbuster outlet. After everybody gets off the car, Stewie sets all the car farts free, and he is quite emotional about it. At the reception counter, Peter finds that the late fee for a movie he rented way back is over $32,419, and he doesn’t have enough to pay. The cashier pulls out a rifle when Peter can’t proceed with the payment. The family escapes, but the employees from the shop are after them – firing guns and issuing threats. 

The Griffins pull off a Rambo-style jump to lose the shop predators. They soon find a cabin in the woods. As Peter discovers he has the wrong movie, the Blockbuster guys catch the family at gunpoint. Amazon drones arrive just in nick of time and save the family. When Lois asks, the drones tell her that they knew about the Griffins’ location and everything – through their internet habits. 

In other words, they are always eavesdropping. Lois requests Alexa to stop spying. Back at home, making their final attempt to watch a film the old-school way, Peter notices he doesn’t have the right adapter cable to connect the VCR. Determined to accomplish the family-fun goal, Lois loads a rifle saying the fam will have to continue their adventure to Florida. 

The last scene takes us to Jeff Bezos who asks viewers a particularly important question. He is rich and bald. Guess which one matters!

The Episode Review

It’s good to see Family Guy trying to regain its impact and it’s visible in this episode – though not so clearly. It’s not a very well-balanced episode, but it’s a slight upgrade over the previous ones we have watched. 

It’s Peter who does the majority of the job here, and other characters appear as nothing more than sleeping partners. The show might have felt a lot better if we had a little more of Brian’s humour and Stewie’s nonsense with interjections from other characters. And, we also missed having cutaways!