Summary
Peter and Lois try to recapture some youth in “Young Parent Trap”, while Chris and Meg are left to fend for themselves.
This recap of Family Guy season 19, episode 17, “Young Parent Trap”, contains spoilers.
There’s a thing that happens when you have kids. No matter how old or cool you are, you become a dork overnight. It’s an inevitable part of being a parent, one of those sneaky small-print contract terms that nobody tells you about until it’s too late. When you have more than one child, the effect multiplies. Your dorkiness increases by an order of magnitude. There’s no possibility of being cool ever again.
This is why the premise of Family Guy season 19, episode 17 is funny — because it’s relatable. It gets ludicrous quickly, obviously, but it begins with a conceit that most of us can relate to. Being recognized as “young parents”, as Peter and Lois are in “Young Parent Trap”, is the dream. You’re suddenly down with the kids, in with the lingo, and not an out-of-touch thirty-something on whom gravity is beginning to take a major toll.
Of course, most of us wouldn’t move into a Millennial apartment complex — basically a filing cabinet for people who like coffee art — and leave our children to fend for themselves, which is what Peter and Lois do. Chris and Meg — the latter of whom has been neglected all season — aren’t exactly equipped to run a household. Quickly the food in the fridge depletes, and Chris has made love to everything left. Luckily, his internet chlorine business has a client in the Millennial Village Luxury Apartment Complex where Peter and Lois are hiding out pretending to like local microbrews, so Chris and Meg infiltrate the place disguised as a couple, hence the “Young Parent Trap” title.
Family Guy season 19, episode 17 is obviously intended to skewer Millennials, but a particular kind of insufferable hipster for whom having kids is a fashion statement (when everyone goes to Quachella, Quahog’s three-day music festival, everyone leaves their kids in the pool, and when we cut back later they’ve all drowned and Stewie is trying to fish them out with a net. It’s the grimmest joke of the episode, but probably the best.) Eventually, Peter and Lois realize that you have kids so you’ve got an excuse not to walk hours through the desert just to see a hologram of Nipsey Hussle. If the alternative is being these kinds of young parents, I’ll happily be a dork forever.
