25 Best Family Guy Episodes Worth Rewatching

This one ditches the usual format and lets Brian and Stewie answer viewer mail, which spins off into three short stories. The standout is Point of Stew, a whole day seen from baby Stewie’s perspective. I cackled through that entire segment the first time around.

Peter ignores a warning and a Y2K apocalypse wipes out Quahog, sending the Griffins off to build a strange new society. It is gloriously dumb. It also kicks off one of the show’s most enduring running gags: the first brawl between Peter and the giant chicken.

Stung by Peter’s tactless birthday speech, Lois tumbles into a midlife crisis and a full party-girl phase. Peter loves it at first, until the sleep deprivation breaks him. Under the gags, it is a sharp little look at the Griffin marriage.

Quagmire wins a dream date that curdles into a marriage he immediately wants out of. The payoff, where his ex ends up dating his elderly father, made me laugh out loud. Few shows commit to a punchline quite like this one.

If you watch only one episode on this list, make it this one. Stewie and Brian hop between parallel universes, each rendered in its own animation style, including a jaw-dropping Disney-style world. It is the show firing on every cylinder at once, and whether you are new to it or rewatching, it holds up.

Peter wins a preschoolers’ trivia game and decides he is a genius, until a real test says otherwise. The fallout gets chaotic fast, and plenty of fans call this the single funniest episode of the run. It belongs to that strong fourth season the show came back with after cancellation.

Peter fakes his own death to dodge a hospital bill, and Death himself shows up to handle the paperwork. The episode reimagines Death as a whiny, self-absorbed character, and it is a riot from start to finish.

Brian quits writing, then accidentally lands a hit when Stewie takes over as his ruthless manager. The fame goes straight to his head, until Bill Maher takes him down a peg. This is peak Brian: pompous, insecure, and a joy to watch get roasted.

A whole episode built around Family Guy’s long, awkward relationship with the Emmys. It is meta, it is a little petty, and it tips its hat to Jon Stewart along the way. The show knows exactly how the industry sees it.

A hurricane traps the family indoors and the cabin fever turns vicious. The real story is Meg finally snapping and reading the whole family for filth. Under the Brian bad-trip subplot, it is one of the show’s more honest moments.

Quagmire’s bachelor life slams into sudden fatherhood when a baby daughter turns up. The comedy comes from him fumbling every single part of it. There is also a surprisingly sweet thread where Brian bonds with the baby.

A fake-cheery holiday special that curdles into something darker and far funnier. Brian and Stewie head to the North Pole and find a grim, over-commercialized operation. It even turns weirdly moving by the end, which is the Road episodes’ secret weapon.

The back half of a wild what-if two-parter where Stewie’s villain side finally goes all in. It is a simulation, so nothing sticks, but watching baby Stewie play tyrant is a blast. The surprise cameos pile up fast.

Peter accidentally tanks Quagmire’s pilot career, then tries to fix it by moving him into the Griffin house. The Peter and Quagmire friction is the whole joy here. Quagmire is at his most chaotic, which is saying something.

Lois lands a job at a thinly veiled version of Fox News, and the show gets to poke the very network that airs it. Brian’s outrage against Lois’s ambition powers the episode. Biting the hand that feeds it is a Family Guy specialty.

Stewie and Brian travel back to the show’s own 1999 pilot, and it doubles as a love letter to how far the animation and jokes have come. Then Brian meddles with history and accidentally kicks off a second Civil War. Only in this universe.

Stewie’s time machine breaks and runs the whole episode backward, so the story unspools in reverse. It is a technical showoff move that mostly pays off. Brian quietly steals it with the best throwaway lines.

Peter eats thirty hamburgers in a row, has a stroke, and then sues the burger chain. Meanwhile Stewie disguises himself as a teenager for a popularity experiment. Both storylines escalate into pure absurdity, exactly as you would hope.

Brian falls for a teacher at Chris’s high school and campaigns to rename James Woods High. Peter counters by bringing in the actual James Woods, who then becomes the family’s pet. Woods as a recurring punching bag is one of the show’s odder running gags.

A feature-length murder mystery that drops the cutaway gags for a real whodunit. The whole town gets invited to a manor, then the bodies start dropping. It is surprisingly tense, which is not a word you reach for with Family Guy often.

The show reworks three Stephen King stories, Stand By Me, Misery, and The Shawshank Redemption, with the Quahog cast in the lead roles. The Shawshank segment in particular is loaded with great jokes. It is a perfect format for Family Guy’s parody muscle.

A full parody of Taken, with Meg kidnapped in Paris and Brian and Stewie running the Liam Neeson rescue. It hits every beat of the movie while skewering the action genre. Meg gets to anchor a story for once, which is rare and welcome.

Stewie gets an ADHD diagnosis, and Brian ends up trying the medication to juice his own creativity. It is a sharper season opener than the few that came before it. The Stewie and Brian dynamic carries the whole thing, as usual.

After an Emmy wardrobe malfunction, the FCC cracks down, so Peter launches his own uncensored TV network. The FCC then descends on Quahog to police everyone’s daily lives. It builds to one of the show’s all-time great musical numbers.

To cover a gambling debt, Peter signs up for medical experiments and gets a drug that changes his orientation. The fallout strains things with Lois and the family before it eventually wears off. It is one of the show’s broader high-concept swings.