Scammed Yankees

"Scammed Yankees" is the twelfth episode of the fourteenth season of the animated sitcom Family Guy, and the 261st episode overall. It aired on Fox in the United States on January 17, 2016, and is written by Ray James and directed by Jerry Langford.^[1]

Plot

When Lois and her mother, Babs Pewterschmidt, go out for a spa day together, Peter is left to entertain his father-in-law Carter Pewterschmidt as Babs no longer trusts him to be left alone after he rearranged the furniture. He struggles to find something of interest, but ends up having a good time with him when he introduces him to the internet. Checking their e-mail, they find an offer from a "Nigerian Prince" that offers to give Carter a million dollars in exchange of an advance of funds. But after they follow through, they find out that it was a scam as Lois informs them of this. Carter loses his temper at Peter for being swindled and vows that they will go to Africa together to get the money back. When Carter arrives to pick Peter up for their trip, Peter informs him that he kept it a secret from Lois.

Meanwhile, Brian gets annoyed when Meg's friends Patty, Ruth, and Esther come to visit. When they ask him to take them to field hockey practice, he thinks he has found a way to get rid of them for a while. When Brian drops them off at school, Brian finds a gym bag left in his car and ends up walking in on a partially-dressed Patty in the changing room and is instantly attracted to her due to her slender body shape. Telling Stewie about what he saw, he points out that she is in high school. When Meg arrives, he pushes her for information about her likes.

In Africa, they travel to find where the people who scammed them are where they witness Alonzo "Hamburger" Jones working as an African warlord where he is brutalizing a village of children and ends every sentence with "hamburger." They arrive at the Nigerian village where they sent the money to, but are immediately captured by local gunmen. Held prisoner, Carter informs them who he is and is treated as a hero by their leader Dave (who calls him "Father Carter") for saving the village. However, Carter insists they tear everything they have down even though they can't give him back the money. Peter stands up to Carter, but he pays the villagers to lock Peter up again.

Pretending to bump into the girls at the mall, Brian gives Patty an extra Build-A-Bear he made and invites her out. Meg objects again due to Patty's age, but Brian continues to brush it off. He arrives to pick her up and they both ignore the objections, going on a date as they drive off listening to Smash Mouth's "All Star." As they watch the stars, Brian nearly gets her to take her sweater off and Meg arrives to confront Patty personally. Meg is forced to admit that she had tried to downplay Patty's looks to keep her in their circle of friends, and Patty agrees to continue to be a friend. The two stars talk about what they have seen as one of them states that he wished for something like that to happen. It then cuts to a spacecraft as Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about the discourse of stars that wish for specific relationships to not happen.

Peter writes a memoir so that someone may know what happened to him. Once it is done, he orders a chimpanzee named Cheebo to deliver them to a French-Canadian flight attendant who will then be assured of passing it along to everyone else in a similarity to the debunked spread of HIV. It gets picked up and turned into a news story by Tom Tucker upon it being made into a song by Paul Simon. Lois hears and goes to Africa to get her father and Peter back. She arrives in time to keep Peter from being executed and finds that her father is unhappy about no longer being trusted alone in his old age. He promises to send money to help rebuild the village and apologizes to Peter. When Peter suggests a picture of him kneeling down in front of the village, the final scene shows a picture of Peter doing that as he tells Joe Swanson to get off his Facebook page.

Reception

The episode received an audience of 3.40 million, making it the second most watched show on Fox that night behind The Simpsons.^[2]

References