Family Guy season 19, episode 3 recap – “Boys & Squirrels”

This recap of Family Guy season 19, episode 3, “Boys & Squirrels”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.

As ever, “Boys & Squirrels” was divided pretty neatly down the middle into two competing plots, though it’s obvious which was the most attention-grabbing, and surprisingly enough it isn’t the one that saw Peter double his height. The payoff for that, though, was pretty great, at least for those of us with wives.

But no, it’s Stewie and Chris who steal the show, which I suppose makes sense given the title. Let’s deal with Peter first, though. He opens the episode with a new chainsaw, and like any man with a new toy, he finds any and every excuse to use it, including buttering Stewie’s toast and cutting his sausages. On the hunt for something else to saw through, he chops down a tree that ends up toppling on top of him, injuring his arm. Turning to a chiropractor for help, he has a back realignment that fixes his arm but also stretches him out to his true height, which is several feet taller than before. There are a lot of gags to emphasize this – when he stands up his head is out of the frame, when he rides a fairground attraction he kicks all the onlookers with his dangling legs, etc., etc. Eventually, though, it becomes too much of an inconvenience and Lois proposes a solution: She, like all women, has the power to berate a man so vehemently that he physically shrinks. By the time she’s finished, his entire body fits on a pillow.

A consequence of Peter chopping down the tree is that Chris and Stewie get a new pet in the form of an orphaned squirrel that they nurse back to health and become very attached to, treating it as their baby (Family Guy might never get bored of intimating a weird relationship between these two.) The little guy grows up fast. They feed and nurse it, take photos with it, and record each milestone for social media, including its first steps. Somewhat shockingly, though, its first steps lead it out into the hallway where Brian tears the poor thing to pieces. (It’s always a shock when Family Guy actually remembers that Brian is a dog.)

Both Stewie and Chris take this development horrendously, though rather than blame Brian, they blame each other. When Chris tries to clean up his shoebox bed, they bicker with increasing nastiness until the only option is couples’ therapy (lots of jokes about therapy here, far too many to count.) It builds to a nice conclusion, but it still keeps this season’s focus rather determinedly on Stewie and Chris’s weird relationship – and, indeed, Stewie’s weird pseudo-adult relationships with absolutely everything. Maybe the next episode will change things up a bit.

Thanks for reading our recap of Family Guy season 19, episode 3, “Boys & Squirrels”.