Mother Tucker

"Mother Tucker" is the 2nd episode of Family Guy 5th season. It was first broadcast on the Fox network on September 17, 2006. In the episode, Peter Griffin's mother gets a divorce. She starts dating a news anchor. Stewie and Brian get a job at a radio station. The episode was written by Tom Devanney and James Purdum is the director of the episode. The episode was seen in about 9.23 million houses when it was first broadcast.
Story
Peter's mother Thelma goes to his house to tell his family she is divorced. Peter and his wife Lois bring Thelma to a place for single people. She meets the news anchor Tom Tucker and starts dating him. Peter does not want them to date and tries to stop them. Tom tells Peter that he should just let Thelma be happy. Peter and Tom start to become friends. However, Thelma later leaves them and Peter thinks that he caused her to leave. Peter learns that it is imporant for fathers and their son to be with each other. He tells Tom to be with his son Jake more.
Brian gets his own talk show on the radio where he talks to phone callers. He tries to make the show feel intelligent, but Stewie makes prank phone calls on the show. The radio station thinks Stewie's calls are funny and makes him part of the show. Stewie makes the show more humorous and offensive. Brian first does not like the change, but he likes it after seeing people liking the new show. Gore Vidal shows up in the talk show after Brian asked him to be in the show before it was changed. Vidal does not like the changes to the show and leaves. Brian gets angry at the changes and stops being part of it.
Production
"Mother Tucker" was written by Tom Devanney. James Purdum is the director of the episode. The radio station Brian worked for (called "Weenie and the Butt") uses many sound effects. The sound effects were made by people who sung at the Academy Awards. Seth MacFarlane (creator of Family Guy) said that it took longer than normal to make the sound effects because they did not sound serious enough. Phyllis Diller guest stars as Peter's mother Thelma. Tamera Mowry and Gore Vidal are also guest stars in the episode. A part of the episode has Thelma trying to tell Peter that she is dating Tom Tucker. She says "Tom here has won a local Emmy for his work with the retardeds". The Fox network does not want the word "retard" or "retarded" to be broadcast on the network. However, this part of the episode was shown anyway. MacFarlane said he does not understand why Fox does not let them use the word retard, but other networks do. He said that this part of the episode made the mental health community angry.
One part of the episode would show why Tom's son Jake has an upside down face. This was not put on broadcast. A part in the episode shows the characters of Peanuts as older people. At first, this was going to be put in the episode "Patriot Games", but that episode was too long to put it in.
Reception
The episode was watched in about 9.23 houses when it was first broadcast.
Dan Iverson from IGN said that the episode would make people who do not like Family Guy "laugh pretty hard." Iverson thought that it "won't be remembered as fondly as some of the episodes from the first few seasons." He thought the funniest part of the episode was showing how radio jockeys are "immature". Brett Love from TV Squad did not like the story with Peter, Thelma, and Tom. Love thought that the "Stewie and Brian stuff was the best part of the episode", but said that the episode was a "slow start to the season". Francis Rizzo from DVD Talk said that the story about radio is "a perfect parody of everything that's wrong in radio."
References
Other websites
Family Guy (season 5) episodes
2006 television episodes