The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire

"The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire"
Family Guy episode
Peter and Brian discover that Quagmire and Loretta are having an affair.
Episode no.	Season 4 Episode 5
Directed by	James Purdum
Written by	Patrick Henry Mike Henry
Production code	4ACX08
Original air date	June 12, 2005
Guest stars
Emeril Lagasse as Himself Randy Savage as himself
Episode chronology
← Previous "Don’t Make Me Over" Next → "Petarded"
Family Guy (season 4) List of Family Guy episodes

"The Cleveland–Loretta Quagmire" is a season four episode of the animated series Family Guy. This episode marks the final appearance of Loretta, until the season 7 episode, "Love, Blactually". The storyline of this episode is about Loretta cheating on Cleveland due to his "lack of passion" and "not being a real man". The episode, with Cleveland separating from Loretta, lays much of the foundation for The Cleveland Show. This episode is rated TV-14 DLS.

Plot summary

Peter invites his friends on his fishing boat for a party at sea. While Quagmire is fishing, he catches a fish that lands in Loretta's shirt. She invites him to reach in and grab it, which after a moment of hesitation he does. While Quagmire's hand is between her breasts, Cleveland approaches and mentions the snacks Peter has supplied, serenely saying hello to Quagmire before walking away. After the fish is finally extracted, Loretta propositions Quagmire (to his amazement). During a game of charades, Joe falls overboard and nearly drowns while attempting to portray "Natalie Wood" in her last moments. Because no one in the family knew what to do in an emergency, Lois insists that they take CPR classes. Peter almost instantly has his CPR card revoked for inappropriate behavior (he unnecessarily performs CPR on two men who were in a minor car accident and takes off their pants to see if they soiled themselves).

While Peter ponders taking the CPR course again, he and Brian hear screams coming from Cleveland’s house. They rush in to find Loretta having sex on the couch. At first Peter believes Cleveland is piebald, but Brian says Loretta was committing adultery with a white man who has a tattoo on his left buttock. Embarrassed, they leave without seeing the man’s face, although Quagmire raises his head from the sofa immediately afterward. They decide that the last thing in the world they should do is tell anyone about it. So after doing everything in the world in one day, they tell Lois, the Swansons and Quagmire that Loretta is having an affair. Peter volunteers to tell Cleveland, since he had experience with delivering bad news (he was in a barbershop quartet performing musical diagnoses for terminally ill patients). Meeting Cleveland at The Drunken Clam with Brian, Peter delivers the news in a typically overly-detailed fashion.

When Cleveland calmly questions Loretta about the affair, she angrily responds that she needs a real man. Cleveland responds in his usual mild-mannered way, even apologizing, and he ends up leaving the house without an angry word. Feeling responsible, Peter invites him to stay in their house. Lois is worried that Cleveland does not seem upset by the fact that his wife cheated on him, or kicked him out of the house at all. Peter suggests that what Cleveland needs is a "revenge lay" and decides to ask Quagmire for advice. Quagmire is "working out" in revealing leopard-skin briefs when Peter and Brian arrive. They instantly recognize a tattoo of his phone number on his butt and realize that Quagmire was Loretta's partner. Despite Quagmire's pleas, Peter and Brian immediately tell Cleveland, but they and Lois are surprised when he accepts it with little emotion.

Lois tells Cleveland that Loretta wants him to express his feelings: that women sometimes want men to be strong and stand up for them. Peter then tries to get his friend to feel some passion by taking him to a wrestling match featuring Randy Savage, but it affects Peter much more than Cleveland. He then puts on a Quagmire mask and forces Brian (who is unwillingly wearing a Loretta mask) on the ground. This method finally yields results: Cleveland becomes enraged and vows to kill Quagmire.

Peter realizes that his plan has worked too well and tries to protect Quagmire by hiding him at Mayor West's mansion. West's lunacy soon proves too much even for Quagmire and he returns home and calls Cleveland to apologize. Cleveland appears and chases Quagmire around his house wielding a baseball bat. Despite finally having Quagmire cowering and at his mercy, and the encouragement of Emperor Palpatine, Cleveland realizes that he is unable to hurt another living person, no matter how badly they have hurt him. Peter tricks Loretta into seeing Cleveland by saying that Lois needs an intervention, but instead of reconciling, the couple angrily agree to get a divorce, with Cleveland saying that he may not be perfect, but he deserves better than Loretta.

Cleveland and Quagmire apologize to each other and, at Quagmire's insistence, take out their remaining aggressions on each other in a boxing ring (in a parody of the ending to Rocky III).

Cultural references

Mike Henry wrote the episode, along with his brother, Patrick.

• Peter sings the song "Rock Lobster" by The B52's to Cleveland in this episode.^[1]
• While the adults play charades on the ship, Joe does the death of Natalie Wood.
• A cutaway shows Peter repainting the famous Sistine Chapel, with a portrait of actor/wrestler André the Giant, a reference to the Andre the Giant Has a Posse street art campaign. He explains that this "would be a little hipper...[to] bring back...those boys you scared away," a reference to the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
• When Brian hears Loretta screaming, Peter seems to fail to understand what has happened. Brian tries to explain that it sounded like someone was screaming, to which Peter replies with "Trouble at the old mill?" This is a reference to Lassie and the innumerable dangers to which Lassie alerted people.
• Quagmire's "My Fellow Americans" flashback is a reference to the Lewinsky scandal, which involved Bill Clinton having sexual relations with his intern. Quagmire even looks like President Clinton during that scene.
• The scene where Cleveland finally learns to get angry at Loretta's infidelity causes him to blow steam out of his ears. This is a reference to the old Popeye cartoon.
• In a cutaway, Quagmire and Cleveland imitate the Festrunk brothers, the “two wild and crazy guys” from the 1970a Saturday Night Live episodes. Peter appears dressed as Beldar from the Coneheads, another of Aykroyd SNL characters from that era.
• Palpatine, from Star Wars, urges Cleveland to “let the hatred flow through” him, which he says to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
• This episode has three references to the Rocky film series. The first reference to Rocky is when Cleveland is doing pull-ups in the front doorway of the Griffin home. The second reference is at the very end when Cleveland and Quagmire are starting a friendly boxing match. The third reference is when the song "Eye of the Tiger by Survivor played just before the closing credits.^[2]

Production

According to the DVD commentary for this episode, Loretta was written out of Family Guy because her voice actor, Alex Borstein (who also voices Lois and other female characters), was apparently tired of voicing Loretta. Therefore, the writers went one step ahead and had her removed from the series.

Reception

With Fox in second place among adults 18 to 49 years old, this episode gained a total of 8.35 million viewers.^[3] Kim Voynar of TV Squad wrote a favorable review, saying "This episode of Family Guy was just chock-full of the tasteless and tacky moments that make the show so popular."^[1]

The "You Have AIDS" sequence, in which Peter and a barbershop quartet dance, in musical revue fashion, around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS, delivering the patient's diagnosis in song, drew protests from several AIDS service organizations.^[4][5] According to the DVD commentary, the song was meant to show how Peter would deliver bad news in the "best way possible". Also according to the DVD commentary, the commentators say that the song is meant to be tasteless, because that's the joke.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Voynar, Kim (2005-06-13). "Family Guy: The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire". TV Squad. http://www.tvsquad.com/2005/06/13/family-guy-the-cleveland-loretta/. Retrieved 2009-11-15. 
2. ^ http://www.tv.com/family-guy/the-cleveland-loretta-quagmire/episode/365974/trivia.html
3. ^ Aurthur, Kate (2005-06-14). "CBS Outscores the N.B.A.". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3D91F38F937A25755C0A9639C8B63. Retrieved 2009-03-26. 
4. ^ Adams, Bob (August 22, 2005). ""Family Guy" has fun with AIDS". Advocate.com. PlanetOut Inc.. http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid19925.asp. Retrieved December 12, 2006. 
5. ^ Bozell, Brent (April 10, 2009). "Fox's "Comedic Genius"". Townhall.com. http://townhall.com/columnists/BrentBozell/2009/04/10/foxs_comedic_genius. Retrieved August 24, 2009. 

Preceded by Don't Make Me Over

Family Guy (season 4)

Succeeded by Petarded