The Big Bang Theory (Family Guy)

"The Big Bang Theory" is the 16th episode of the ninth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. It aired on Fox in the United States on May 8, 2011.^[1] This episode follows Stewie and Brian on their quest to stop Stewie's evil half-brother Bertram from going back in time to the Renaissance period and killing Leonardo da Vinci, who is a part of Stewie's ancestry, in order to prevent Stewie's existence.

The episode was written by David A. Goodman and directed by Dominic Polcino.

Plot

After failing to make a good comeback joke against Brian, Stewie goes back in time to redo it, before continually messing around with Brian. Eventually, Brian catches him inside the time machine. In fighting over its controls, they are accidentally transported out of the space-time continuum, where the laws of physics do not apply and where the return pad cannot get them home. Stewie decides to take a risky effort to overload his return pad to bounce them back into the space-time continuum. Stewie later determines that he was the cause of the Big Bang, because the background radiation that created the universe matches the signature of his return pad all due to the temporal predestination paradox causality loop.

When Stewie obtains his plutonium to power the return pad, Bertram learns of the time machine and sneaks into the Griffin house to kill Stewie's ancestor in order to prevent him from ever being born. Unfortunately, as Stewie and Brian discover, by preventing the former from being born, then Stewie would not have been able to start the Big Bang, thereby creating a paradox that begins to wipe everything from existence. Stewie explains this to Brian and says that they will have only one shot at getting back to the present since Bertram took the return pad with him. Brian and Stewie then go back to fifteen minutes before Bertram arrives in the past to stop him from killing Stewie's ancestor, revealed to be Leonardo da Vinci. Stewie guesses that given that he and Bertram share the same father but have different mothers, da Vinci must be an ancestor from Lois's side of the family or else Bertram would be erasing himself as well if he killed Leonardo.

When Bertram arrives in the past, he throws a knife at Leonardo, forcing Stewie to block the attack. Stewie then tries to kill Bertram with the knife but Bertram hits Stewie before he could do so. He then uses Leonardo's winged flying machine to fly away. Since Stewie needs the return pad to get back to the present, he uses Leonardo's ornithopter to chase Bertram, and ends up battling in midair with him. Stewie shoots a magnetic missile at Bertram but he jumps out of Leonardo da Vinci's invention and activates his parachute so he can safely fall to the ground. Bertram takes a crossbow and has Stewie, Brian, and Leonardo at an arrow point. Stewie tells Bertram that he created the universe and that if he is erased, the entire universe will disappear forever. But Bertram says that to him, erasing Stewie is worth destroying the universe and shoots Leonardo in the chest with a crossbow. In rage, Stewie shoots Bertram in the chest and head with the same crossbow, killing him.

Despite the fact that Leonardo is dead, the universe is still existing. Stewie then concludes that he must be his own ancestor. He sends Brian back to the present, where a letter from the Vatican arrives, detailing that Stewie has buried himself in a cryogenic tube underneath the Griffin household. Once he is unearthed and thawed, Stewie informs Brian he put his DNA into a syringe and injected it into Leonardo's girlfriend (multiple times). Stewie brings back a candle from Leonardo's time, leaving Brian (who would have rather had him bring back one of Leonardo's original notebooks) annoyed.

Production and development

David A. Goodman wrote the episode.

"The Big Bang Theory" was originally intended to air as the seventeenth episode of the ninth season of Family Guy, airing a week after the second part of a fictional crossover event among American Dad!, The Cleveland Show and Family Guy.^[2] However, just two days before its planned airing, it was announced by the executive of the entertainment division of the Fox Broadcasting Company that the event was pushed back until the following week, due to a series of tornadoes that killed nearly 300 people in the Southern United States.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

Reception

Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club graded the episode a B, stating "I've been down on Family Guy recently for experimenting a little bit too much with morality and form, but tonight's episode was the kind that I think it still does well. It's not as good as it was pre-cancellation, but there's a pleasant weirdness to it that makes me think that this is the way Family Guy should be. It's not excellent, but it's more than good enough".^[8]

References

External links

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