Death Has a Shadow
Encyclopedia
"Death Has a Shadow" is the first episode of the animated series Family Guy
. It originally aired on the Fox network
in the United States after Super Bowl XXXIII
on January 31, 1999. The episode is based on series creator Seth MacFarlane
's original pitch to Fox, The Life of Larry, and is a remake of the original Family Guy pilot. In the episode, Peter
loses his job after drinking too much at a stag party and falls asleep at work. He then signs up for welfare to keep his wife Lois
from finding out, but gets much more money than he expected. Lois finds out and Peter decides to dump the money from a blimp at the Super Bowl. He is then arrested, and must await his family's rescue.
The basis for Family Guy was MacFarlane's thesis
film The Life of Larry, created in 1995 while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design
. A sequel was conceived in 1996 called Larry & Steve, which aired in 1997 as a segment of Cartoon Network
's World Premiere Toons
. Both shorts caught the attention of Fox, who contacted MacFarlane in 1999 to develop a series called Family Guy based on the films. A hand-drawn pilot was created by MacFarlane with a budget of $50,000, which led to the series being accepted for production.
Critical responses to the episode were mostly positive. According to Nielsen ratings
, it was viewed in 22.01 million homes during its original airing in the United States. "Death Has a Shadow" was written by Seth MacFarlane and directed by Peter Shin
, and featured a guest performance from Pat Summerall
as well various recurring guest voices from the series. In the tenth season
episode "Back to the Pilot
", which premiered on November 13, 2011, Brian and Stewie go back in time to "Death Has a Shadow".
receives an invitation to a bachelor party
at his neighbor Glenn Quagmire
's house, his wife Lois
pleads with him not to drink. Peter says he will not, but due to encouragement from Glenn, Peter gets drunk and suffers from a hangover
the following morning. He falls asleep on the kitchen table during breakfast. Lois is alarmed, but decides to forgive him. Peter falls asleep on the job while working as a safety inspector at the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Factory. He is fired for negligence when many highly dangerous "toys" (axes, jackknives, toasters, hazardous pills, and so on) are released. Not wanting to upset Lois again, he decides to keep it a secret. After Brian
tells him to think of his family's well-being, Peter applies for welfare. Peter is shocked to find that his first welfare check is for $150,000 due to a misplaced decimal point.
Peter buys lavish gifts for his family such as Michelangelo
's David
, a moat, and a ski boat. Meg
, Stewie
, and Chris
find out that Peter is unemployed, and he tries to keep them from telling Lois. Lois finds out when she receives the next welfare check in the mail. Peter decides that he will make it up to Lois by dropping all of his extra welfare money out of a blimp
above Super Bowl XXXIII
. This scene has a parody of the NFL on Fox
theme music.
Peter and Brian are arrested by security guards and prosecuted for welfare fraud. Lois begs the judge to forgive her husband, but instead ends up in jail herself. Stewie
uses a mind control device to get his parents and Brian released and get Peter his job back. The episode ends with things back to normal. Peter thinks about new ways to make money, and does not seem to have learned his lesson.
(RISD). During college
, he created his thesis
film entitled The Life of Larry, which was later submitted by his professor at RISD to Hanna-Barbera
, which led to MacFarlane being hired by the company. In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry entitled Larry and Steve
, which featured a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve. The short was broadcast in 1997 as one of Cartoon Network
's World Premiere Toons.
In 1997, while writing for Hanna-Barbera, MacFarlane planned to develop the Larry shorts into a short film series for MADtv
; however, the project was abandoned because the show did not possess a large enough budget to make any kind of animation. As development continued, the genre gradually shifted to a prime-time series, while the characters of Larry and Steve formed the basis for Peter and Brian, respectively. During the year, a Hanna-Barbera development executive introduced MacFarlane to alternative comedians
Mike Darnell and Leslie Collins in an attempt to get Hanna-Barbera back into the prime-time business. The executives were unimpressed; a year later, MacFarlane contacted Collins at Fox
; she arranged a meeting with him and the company executives to create a series based on the characters entitled Family Guy.
Fox proposed MacFarlane complete a 15-minute short, and gave him a budget of $50,000. Several aspects of Family Guy were inspired by the Larry shorts. After the pilot aired, the series was greenlighted. Premises were drawn from several 1980s Saturday morning cartoons MacFarlane watched as a child, such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Rubik, the Amazing Cube
.
, MacFarlane stated,
Upon completion of the pilot, the series went on the air. "Death Has a Shadow" was the first episode of Family Guy to be aired. It was written by creator MacFarlane, and was the first episode to be directed by Peter Shin
. The episode guest starred Lori Alan
as Diane Simmons, Carlos Alazraqui
as Jonathan Weed, Mike Henry as Cleveland Brown
, Billy West
, Fred Tatasciore
, Joey Slotnick
, Phil LaMarr
, Wally Wingert
, and fellow cartoonist Butch Hartman
as various characters. The episode aired after Super Bowl XXXIII
on January 31, 1999.
For "Death Has a Shadow", several changes were made from the original pilot pitch. For the series, Lois was a redhead, as opposed to the original pilot, where she was a blonde. In the original pilot, Lois discovered that Peter lost his job, and by the end of the episode, he fails to get a new one nor does he apply for welfare. The idea for Peter to apply for welfare and unintentionally become wealthy was suggested by executive producer
David Zuckerman
, who suggested the idea in order to add a larger amount of plot to the episode. Several sequences and gags were integrated into the episode from creator MacFarlane's 1995 thesis film The Life of Larry, including the sequence where the Griffin family sees Philadelphia
, and a brief cutaway where Peter flatulates
for the first time at the age of thirty.
Series creator Seth MacFarlane was cast as four of the show's main characters: Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, and Glenn Quagmire. MacFarlane chose to voice these characters himself, believing it would be easier to portray the voices he already envisioned than for someone else to attempt it. MacFarlane drew inspiration for the voice of Peter from a security guard he overheard talking while attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Stewie's voice was based on the voice of English actor Rex Harrison
, especially his performance in the 1964 musical My Fair Lady
. MacFarlane uses his regular speaking voice when playing Brian. MacFarlane also provides voices for various other recurring and one-time characters, including news anchor Tom Tucker and Lois' father Carter Pewterschmidt.
Alex Borstein
was cast as Lois Griffin, Asian correspondent Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown, and Lois' mother Barbara Pewterschmidt. Borstein was asked to provide a voice for the original pilot while she was working on MADtv
. She had not met MacFarlane or seen any of his artwork and said it was "really sight unseen". At the time, Borstein performed in a stage show in Los Angeles, in which she played a redheaded mother whose voice she had based on one of her cousins. The voice was originally slower, but when MacFarlane heard it, he replied "Make it a little less annoying...and speed it up, or every episode will last four hours". Seth Green
was chosen to play Chris Griffin and Neil Goldman. Green stated that he did an impression of the "Buffalo Bill"
character from the thriller film The Silence of the Lambs during his audition. His main inspiration for Chris' voice came from envisioning how "Buffalo Bill" would sound if he were speaking through a public address system at a McDonald's
. Lacey Chabert
was cast as Meg Griffin. Chabert voiced Meg Griffin for the first production season (15 episodes), but due to a contractual agreement was never credited. Chabert left the series because of time conflicts with her role on Party of Five
and schoolwork, and was replaced by Mila Kunis
.
Philadelphia is referenced in "Death Has a Shadow", where the Griffin family view the film and Peter, as a result of a drunken condition due to consuming an Irish coffee
shortly before seeing it, he finds humor in the film's downbeat atmosphere as he remarks Tom Hanks as a "funny guy" and that "everything he says is a stitch" to which he laughs when Hanks' onscreen character states "I have AIDS". The pornographic film that Peter and the guests at Quagmire's stag party watch is entitled Assablanca, a reference to the 1942
romantic drama Casablanca
. The sculpture Peter buys is Michelangelo
's sculpture David
. A reference to Adolf Hitler
's persecution
of Jewish people is made during a cutaway where Hitler is seen working out at a German gym and becomes jealous of a Jewish man with a more physically fit body who is gloating and attracting the attention of various women.
A cutaway is shown where Peter encounters a Chinese man standing his guard against a column of Chinese
Type 59 tanks
, a reference to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
. A brief reference to the 1971 episode of The Brady Bunch
"Where There's Smoke" is made, where Greg experiments with smoking and is caught by Jan, who reports this to Mike; an angry Mike punishes Greg by placing him in a snake pit
; Jan is also punished for tattling and placed in a fire pit
. When the judge declares Peter sentenced to prison for two years, the jury react in shock, stating "Oh no!"; shortly afterward, the Kool-Aid Man
breaks through the wall of the courthouse proclaiming his catchphrase "Oh yeah!". Realizing he has walked into the wrong room, he nervously leaves. In the final scenes of the episode, the Griffin family
is seen watching a television program called TV's Bloopers, a reference to the 1984 ABC
and NBC
television series TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes; towards the end of the scene, a bear is seen breaking through a wall, a reference to a running gag
in the series involving a certain character or breaking through a wall.
in a 2008 review rated the episode an 8.9/10, praising the integration of humor into the episode's storyline. Haque noted that the episode was "a very strong start to this long running classic series, and revisiting it serves as a reminder that unlike many other television shows, there are very few awkward moments, and much of the show's brilliance is immediately apparent." In 2009, the site singled out "Death Has a Shadow" as a "strong start [to Family Guy]".
Robin Pierson of The TV Critic gave the episode a mixed review, rating the episode a 67/100, stating that it is one of the most densely packed pilots on television, he mentioned that it is entertaining but he said that there are many jokes that follow the quality does not win out over quantity saying. He compared Peter to Homer Simpson
and he compared the show to The Simpsons
and the King of the Hill
. He criticized the amount of unfunny jokes while he praised the surreal moments. At the end of his review he stated that "Family Guy" is a different kind of animated comedy which sets out to do jokes that other cartoons can’t do, also mentioning that the show had promise to become really funny.
A more negative review came from EW.com's Ken Tucker, who called the animation clunky, which he said made Hanna-Barbera
's animation look like state-of-the-art. Tucker also said in his review that he hoped that smart people would use the Family Guy half hour to turn off the television set and start a debate over the air strikes in Kosovo Combine and he also called the show "The Simpsons as conceived by a singularly sophomoric mind that lacks any reference point beyond other TV shows". Even before it aired the pilot received some criticism from the Parents Television Council
, a watchdog
; the creator of this website L. Brent Bozell III wrote that he initially speculated that Family Guy would be "pushing the envelope".
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
. It originally aired on the Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
in the United States after Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII was an American football game played on January 31, 1999, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, Florida to decide the National Football League champion, following the 1998 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Denver Broncos defeated the National Football...
on January 31, 1999. The episode is based on series creator Seth MacFarlane
Seth MacFarlane
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is an American animator, writer, comedian, producer, actor, singer, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated sitcoms Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.A native of Kent,...
's original pitch to Fox, The Life of Larry, and is a remake of the original Family Guy pilot. In the episode, Peter
Peter Griffin
Peter Griffin is a fictional character and the protagonist of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the patriarch of the Griffin family. He is voiced by cartoonist Seth MacFarlane and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family in the 15-minute short on December 20, 1998....
loses his job after drinking too much at a stag party and falls asleep at work. He then signs up for welfare to keep his wife Lois
Lois Griffin
Lois Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. She is voiced by writer Alex Borstein and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family in the 15-minute short on December 20, 1998. Lois was created and designed by series creator Seth MacFarlane...
from finding out, but gets much more money than he expected. Lois finds out and Peter decides to dump the money from a blimp at the Super Bowl. He is then arrested, and must await his family's rescue.
The basis for Family Guy was MacFarlane's thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
film The Life of Larry, created in 1995 while he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
. A sequel was conceived in 1996 called Larry & Steve, which aired in 1997 as a segment of Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
's World Premiere Toons
The Cartoon Cartoon Show
What a Cartoon! , is an American animation showcase project created by Fred Seibert for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons to be run on Cartoon Network...
. Both shorts caught the attention of Fox, who contacted MacFarlane in 1999 to develop a series called Family Guy based on the films. A hand-drawn pilot was created by MacFarlane with a budget of $50,000, which led to the series being accepted for production.
Critical responses to the episode were mostly positive. According to Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
, it was viewed in 22.01 million homes during its original airing in the United States. "Death Has a Shadow" was written by Seth MacFarlane and directed by Peter Shin
Peter Shin
Peter Shin is the:*supervising director of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story*director of Big Bug Man.*director of Family Guy episodes:**"Death Has a Shadow"**"Emission Impossible"**"North by North Quahog"**"It's a Trap!"...
, and featured a guest performance from Pat Summerall
Pat Summerall
George Allen "Pat" Summerall is a former American football player and television sportscaster, having worked at CBS, Fox, and ESPN.Summerall is best known for his work with John Madden on NFL telecasts for CBS and Fox.-High school:...
as well various recurring guest voices from the series. In the tenth season
Family Guy (season 10)
Family Guy tenth season debuted on the Fox network, on September 25, 2011. The series followed the Griffin family, a dysfunctional family consisting of father Peter, mother Lois, daughter Meg, son Chris, baby Stewie and Brian, the family pet, who reside in their hometown of Quahog...
episode "Back to the Pilot
Back to the Pilot
"Back to the Pilot" is the fifth episode of the tenth season of the animated comedy series Family Guy. The episode originally aired on Fox in the United States on November 13, 2011...
", which premiered on November 13, 2011, Brian and Stewie go back in time to "Death Has a Shadow".
Plot summary
When Peter GriffinPeter Griffin
Peter Griffin is a fictional character and the protagonist of the animated comedy series Family Guy and the patriarch of the Griffin family. He is voiced by cartoonist Seth MacFarlane and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family in the 15-minute short on December 20, 1998....
receives an invitation to a bachelor party
Bachelor party
A bachelor party , also known as a stag party, stag night or stag do , a bull's party , or a buck's party or buck's night , is a party held for a man shortly before he enters marriage, to celebrate his "last night of freedom" or merely to spend...
at his neighbor Glenn Quagmire
Glenn Quagmire
Glenn Quagmire, often referred to as just Quagmire, is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. Quagmire is a neighbor and friend of the Griffin family. He is best known for his hypersexuality...
's house, his wife Lois
Lois Griffin
Lois Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. She is voiced by writer Alex Borstein and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family in the 15-minute short on December 20, 1998. Lois was created and designed by series creator Seth MacFarlane...
pleads with him not to drink. Peter says he will not, but due to encouragement from Glenn, Peter gets drunk and suffers from a hangover
Hangover
A hangover describes the sum of unpleasant physiological effects following heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages. The most commonly reported characteristics of a hangover include headache, nausea, sensitivity to light and noise, lethargy, dysphoria, diarrhea and thirst, typically after the...
the following morning. He falls asleep on the kitchen table during breakfast. Lois is alarmed, but decides to forgive him. Peter falls asleep on the job while working as a safety inspector at the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Factory. He is fired for negligence when many highly dangerous "toys" (axes, jackknives, toasters, hazardous pills, and so on) are released. Not wanting to upset Lois again, he decides to keep it a secret. After Brian
Brian Griffin
Brian Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. He is voiced by Seth MacFarlane and first appeared on television, along with the rest of the family, in a 15-minute short on December 20, 1998. Brian was created and designed by MacFarlane himself...
tells him to think of his family's well-being, Peter applies for welfare. Peter is shocked to find that his first welfare check is for $150,000 due to a misplaced decimal point.
Peter buys lavish gifts for his family such as Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's David
David (Michelangelo)
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
, a moat, and a ski boat. Meg
Meg Griffin
Meg Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. She is the eldest child of Lois and Peter and elder sister of Chris and Stewie. Meg is considered as the black sheep of the series due to the lack of attention she receives....
, Stewie
Stewie Griffin
Stewie Griffin is a fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy. Once obsessed with world domination and matricide, Stewie is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin, and the brother of Chris and Meg....
, and Chris
Chris Griffin
Chris Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. He is the son and middle child of Peter and Lois Griffin, brother of Stewie and Meg Griffin. Chris is voiced by Seth Green.-Personality:...
find out that Peter is unemployed, and he tries to keep them from telling Lois. Lois finds out when she receives the next welfare check in the mail. Peter decides that he will make it up to Lois by dropping all of his extra welfare money out of a blimp
Blimp
A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is a floating airship without an internal supporting framework or keel. A non-rigid airship differs from a semi-rigid airship and a rigid airship in that it does not have any rigid structure, neither a complete framework nor a partial keel, to help the airbag...
above Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII was an American football game played on January 31, 1999, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, Florida to decide the National Football League champion, following the 1998 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Denver Broncos defeated the National Football...
. This scene has a parody of the NFL on Fox
NFL on FOX
NFL on Fox is the brand name of the Fox Broadcasting Company's coverage of the National Football League's National Football Conference games, produced by Fox Sports...
theme music.
Peter and Brian are arrested by security guards and prosecuted for welfare fraud. Lois begs the judge to forgive her husband, but instead ends up in jail herself. Stewie
Stewie Griffin
Stewie Griffin is a fictional character from the animated television series Family Guy. Once obsessed with world domination and matricide, Stewie is the youngest child of Peter and Lois Griffin, and the brother of Chris and Meg....
uses a mind control device to get his parents and Brian released and get Peter his job back. The episode ends with things back to normal. Peter thinks about new ways to make money, and does not seem to have learned his lesson.
Background
MacFarlane initially conceived Family Guy in 1995 while studying animation under the Rhode Island School of DesignRhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design is a fine arts and design college located in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1877. Located at the base of College Hill, the RISD campus is contiguous with the Brown University campus. The two institutions share social, academic, and community resources and...
(RISD). During college
College
A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
, he created his thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
film entitled The Life of Larry, which was later submitted by his professor at RISD to Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
, which led to MacFarlane being hired by the company. In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry entitled Larry and Steve
Larry shorts
The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve are two animated short films created by Seth MacFarlane in the 1990s that eventually led to the development of the animated sitcom Family Guy. MacFarlane originally created The Life of Larry as a thesis film in 1995, while studying at the Rhode Island School of...
, which featured a middle-aged character named Larry and an intellectual dog, Steve. The short was broadcast in 1997 as one of Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
's World Premiere Toons.
In 1997, while writing for Hanna-Barbera, MacFarlane planned to develop the Larry shorts into a short film series for MADtv
MADtv
MADtv is an American sketch comedy television series. It licensed the name and logo of Mad, but otherwise had no connection with the humor magazine outside the animated Spy vs. Spy and Don Martin cartoon shorts and images of Alfred E. Neuman that the show featured during the late 1990s. Its first...
; however, the project was abandoned because the show did not possess a large enough budget to make any kind of animation. As development continued, the genre gradually shifted to a prime-time series, while the characters of Larry and Steve formed the basis for Peter and Brian, respectively. During the year, a Hanna-Barbera development executive introduced MacFarlane to alternative comedians
Alternative comedy
Alternative comedy is a term that originated in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era, and typically avoids relying on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt defines it as "comedy where the...
Mike Darnell and Leslie Collins in an attempt to get Hanna-Barbera back into the prime-time business. The executives were unimpressed; a year later, MacFarlane contacted Collins at Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
; she arranged a meeting with him and the company executives to create a series based on the characters entitled Family Guy.
Fox proposed MacFarlane complete a 15-minute short, and gave him a budget of $50,000. Several aspects of Family Guy were inspired by the Larry shorts. After the pilot aired, the series was greenlighted. Premises were drawn from several 1980s Saturday morning cartoons MacFarlane watched as a child, such as The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang and Rubik, the Amazing Cube
Rubik, the Amazing Cube
Rubik, the Amazing Cube was a Saturday morning cartoon that aired from 10 September 1983–1 September 1984 in the United States, produced by Ruby-Spears Productions. The program, broadcast as part of The Pac-Man/Rubik, the Amazing Cube Hour block on ABC, featured a magic Rubik’s Cube named Rubik...
.
Production
Production of the pilot for Family Guy began in 1998, and took six months to create and produce. Recalling the experience in an interview with The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, MacFarlane stated,
Upon completion of the pilot, the series went on the air. "Death Has a Shadow" was the first episode of Family Guy to be aired. It was written by creator MacFarlane, and was the first episode to be directed by Peter Shin
Peter Shin
Peter Shin is the:*supervising director of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story*director of Big Bug Man.*director of Family Guy episodes:**"Death Has a Shadow"**"Emission Impossible"**"North by North Quahog"**"It's a Trap!"...
. The episode guest starred Lori Alan
Lori Alan
Lori Alan , sometimes credited as Lori Allen, is an American voice actress who provides the voice of news anchor Diane Simmons on Family Guy, various voices on Hey Arnold!, and SpongeBob SquarePants as Pearl....
as Diane Simmons, Carlos Alazraqui
Carlos Alazraqui
Carlos Jaime Alazraqui is an American actor, comedian, impressionist and voice actor. He is best known for his role as Deputy James Garcia on the Comedy Central series Reno 911!. His voice-over work includes the role of Bobbi Fabulous on Phineas and Ferb, the Taco Bell chihuahua, Denzel Q...
as Jonathan Weed, Mike Henry as Cleveland Brown
Cleveland Brown
Cleveland Orenthal Brown is a character from the animated television series Family Guy, and its spin-off series The Cleveland Show. He is voiced by Mike Henry. In the first seven seasons of Family Guy, Brown is a frequently recurring character. As one of Peter Griffin's neighbors and friends,...
, Billy West
Billy West
William Richard "Billy" West is an American voice actor. Born in Detroit but raised in the Roslindale neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, Billy launched his career in the early 1980s performing daily comedic routines on Boston's WBCN. He left the radio station to work on the short-lived revival...
, Fred Tatasciore
Fred Tatasciore
Frederick "Fred" Tatasciore is an American voice actor who portrays secondary characters as well as monstrous-looking types...
, Joey Slotnick
Joey Slotnick
Joey Slotnick is an American film and television actor.-Biography:Slotnick was born in Chicago, Ill.His film roles include computer industry pioneer Steve Wozniak in the film Pirates of Silicon Valley, and a part in the 1996 blockbuster Twister...
, Phil LaMarr
Phil LaMarr
Phillip "Phil" LaMarr is an American actor, comedian and voice actor. One of the original cast members on the sketch comedy series MADtv, he is also known for his small, but memorable role as Marvin in Pulp Fiction...
, Wally Wingert
Wally Wingert
Wallace E. "Wally" Wingert is an American actor and voice artist. He is originally from Des Moines, Iowa but he currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California. He is the current announcer for the second incarnation of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the current voice of Jon Arbuckle in...
, and fellow cartoonist Butch Hartman
Butch Hartman
Elmer Earl "Butch" Hartman IV is an American animator, executive producer, animation director, storyboard artist, voice actor, occasional singer, producer, and creator of the animated series The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom and T.U.F.F. Puppy.-Childhood:Hartman was born in Highland Park,...
as various characters. The episode aired after Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII
Super Bowl XXXIII was an American football game played on January 31, 1999, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, Florida to decide the National Football League champion, following the 1998 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Denver Broncos defeated the National Football...
on January 31, 1999.
For "Death Has a Shadow", several changes were made from the original pilot pitch. For the series, Lois was a redhead, as opposed to the original pilot, where she was a blonde. In the original pilot, Lois discovered that Peter lost his job, and by the end of the episode, he fails to get a new one nor does he apply for welfare. The idea for Peter to apply for welfare and unintentionally become wealthy was suggested by executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
David Zuckerman
David Zuckerman (producer)
David J. Zuckerman is an American writer and producer, and is best known as the original showrunner and executive producer of the animated comedy series Family Guy, as well as the creator of the American adaptation of the Australian television series of the same name, Wilfred.A native of Danville,...
, who suggested the idea in order to add a larger amount of plot to the episode. Several sequences and gags were integrated into the episode from creator MacFarlane's 1995 thesis film The Life of Larry, including the sequence where the Griffin family sees Philadelphia
Philadelphia (film)
Philadelphia is a 1993 American drama film that was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to acknowledge HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and homophobia. It was written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme. The film stars Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington...
, and a brief cutaway where Peter flatulates
Flatulence
Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals. The medical term for the mixture of gases is flatus, informally known as a fart, or simply gas...
for the first time at the age of thirty.
Series creator Seth MacFarlane was cast as four of the show's main characters: Peter Griffin, Brian Griffin, Stewie Griffin, and Glenn Quagmire. MacFarlane chose to voice these characters himself, believing it would be easier to portray the voices he already envisioned than for someone else to attempt it. MacFarlane drew inspiration for the voice of Peter from a security guard he overheard talking while attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Stewie's voice was based on the voice of English actor Rex Harrison
Rex Harrison
Sir Reginald Carey “Rex” Harrison was an English actor of stage and screen. Harrison won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards.-Youth and stage career:...
, especially his performance in the 1964 musical My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady (film)
My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
. MacFarlane uses his regular speaking voice when playing Brian. MacFarlane also provides voices for various other recurring and one-time characters, including news anchor Tom Tucker and Lois' father Carter Pewterschmidt.
Alex Borstein
Alex Borstein
Alexandrea "Alex" Borstein is an American actress, singer, voice actress, writer and comedian. She is best known for her long-running role as Lois Griffin on the animated television series Family Guy, and as a cast member on the sketch comedy series MADtv.A native of Highland Park, Illinois,...
was cast as Lois Griffin, Asian correspondent Tricia Takanawa, Loretta Brown, and Lois' mother Barbara Pewterschmidt. Borstein was asked to provide a voice for the original pilot while she was working on MADtv
MADtv
MADtv is an American sketch comedy television series. It licensed the name and logo of Mad, but otherwise had no connection with the humor magazine outside the animated Spy vs. Spy and Don Martin cartoon shorts and images of Alfred E. Neuman that the show featured during the late 1990s. Its first...
. She had not met MacFarlane or seen any of his artwork and said it was "really sight unseen". At the time, Borstein performed in a stage show in Los Angeles, in which she played a redheaded mother whose voice she had based on one of her cousins. The voice was originally slower, but when MacFarlane heard it, he replied "Make it a little less annoying...and speed it up, or every episode will last four hours". Seth Green
Seth Green
Seth Benjamin Green is an American actor, comedian, voice actor, and television producer. He is well known for his role as Daniel "Oz" Osbourne in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as Dr. Evil's son Scott in the Austin Powers series of comedy films, Mitch Miller in That '70s Show, and the voice of Chris...
was chosen to play Chris Griffin and Neil Goldman. Green stated that he did an impression of the "Buffalo Bill"
Jame Gumb
Jame Gumb, known by the nickname Buffalo Bill, is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he was played by Ted Levine...
character from the thriller film The Silence of the Lambs during his audition. His main inspiration for Chris' voice came from envisioning how "Buffalo Bill" would sound if he were speaking through a public address system at a McDonald's
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants, serving around 64 million customers daily in 119 countries. Headquartered in the United States, the company began in 1940 as a barbecue restaurant operated by the eponymous Richard and Maurice McDonald; in 1948...
. Lacey Chabert
Lacey Chabert
Lacey Nicole Chabert is an American actress and voice actress, known for her roles as Claudia Salinger in the television drama Party of Five and as Gretchen Wieners in the movie Mean Girls...
was cast as Meg Griffin. Chabert voiced Meg Griffin for the first production season (15 episodes), but due to a contractual agreement was never credited. Chabert left the series because of time conflicts with her role on Party of Five
Party of Five
Party of Five is an American teen drama television series that aired on Fox for six seasons, from September 12, 1994, until May 3, 2000.Critically acclaimed, the show suffered from low ratings and after its first season was slated for cancellation...
and schoolwork, and was replaced by Mila Kunis
Mila Kunis
Milena "Mila" Kunis is an American actress. Her work includes the role of Jackie Burkhart on the TV series That '70s Show and the voice of Meg Griffin on the animated series Family Guy...
.
Cultural references
The 1993 dramaDrama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
Philadelphia is referenced in "Death Has a Shadow", where the Griffin family view the film and Peter, as a result of a drunken condition due to consuming an Irish coffee
Irish coffee
Irish coffee is a cocktail consisting of hot coffee, Irish whiskey, and sugar, stirred, and topped with thick cream. The coffee is drunk through the cream. The original recipe explicitly uses cream that has not been whipped, although whipped cream is often used. Irish coffee may be considered a...
shortly before seeing it, he finds humor in the film's downbeat atmosphere as he remarks Tom Hanks as a "funny guy" and that "everything he says is a stitch" to which he laughs when Hanks' onscreen character states "I have AIDS". The pornographic film that Peter and the guests at Quagmire's stag party watch is entitled Assablanca, a reference to the 1942
1942 in film
The year 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest of all time, Casablanca.-Events:...
romantic drama Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
. The sculpture Peter buys is Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's sculpture David
David (Michelangelo)
David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created between 1501 and 1504, by the Italian artist Michelangelo. It is a marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence...
. A reference to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's persecution
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
of Jewish people is made during a cutaway where Hitler is seen working out at a German gym and becomes jealous of a Jewish man with a more physically fit body who is gloating and attracting the attention of various women.
A cutaway is shown where Peter encounters a Chinese man standing his guard against a column of Chinese
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
Type 59 tanks
Type 59
The Type 59 main battle tank is a Chinese produced version of the Soviet T-54A tank, an improvement over the ubiquitous T-54/55. The first vehicles were produced in 1958 and it was accepted into service in 1959, with serial production beginning in 1963...
, a reference to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese , were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People's Republic of China beginning on 15 April 1989...
. A brief reference to the 1971 episode of The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch
The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...
"Where There's Smoke" is made, where Greg experiments with smoking and is caught by Jan, who reports this to Mike; an angry Mike punishes Greg by placing him in a snake pit
Snake pit
Snake pits are places of horror, torture and even death in European legends and fairy tales. The Viking warlord Ragnar Lodbrok is said to have been thrown into a snake pit and died there, after his army had been defeated in battle by King Aelle II of Northumbria...
; Jan is also punished for tattling and placed in a fire pit
Fire pit
Fire pits have been in existence for a very long time and despite many technological advancements since the advent of man's use of fire, they have remained a popular item because of their versatility. A fire pit can physically vary from a pit dug into the ground to an elaborate gas burning...
. When the judge declares Peter sentenced to prison for two years, the jury react in shock, stating "Oh no!"; shortly afterward, the Kool-Aid Man
Kool-Aid Man
Kool-Aid Man is the mascot for Kool-Aid, a popular drink mix. The character has appeared on television and print advertising as a fun-loving gigantic pitcher, filled with red Kool-Aid and marked with a fingerpainted smiley face...
breaks through the wall of the courthouse proclaiming his catchphrase "Oh yeah!". Realizing he has walked into the wrong room, he nervously leaves. In the final scenes of the episode, the Griffin family
Griffin family
The Griffin family is a family from the animated television series Family Guy. The Griffins are a nuclear family consisting of the married couple Peter and Lois, their three children Meg, Chris, and Stewie, and their dog Brian. They live at 31 Spooner Street in the fictional town of Quahog, Rhode...
is seen watching a television program called TV's Bloopers, a reference to the 1984 ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
and NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television series TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes; towards the end of the scene, a bear is seen breaking through a wall, a reference to a running gag
Running gag
A running gag, or running joke, is a literary device that takes the form of an amusing joke or a comical reference and appears repeatedly throughout a work of literature or other form of storytelling....
in the series involving a certain character or breaking through a wall.
Reception
The episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. Ahsan Haque of IGNIGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
in a 2008 review rated the episode an 8.9/10, praising the integration of humor into the episode's storyline. Haque noted that the episode was "a very strong start to this long running classic series, and revisiting it serves as a reminder that unlike many other television shows, there are very few awkward moments, and much of the show's brilliance is immediately apparent." In 2009, the site singled out "Death Has a Shadow" as a "strong start [to Family Guy]".
Robin Pierson of The TV Critic gave the episode a mixed review, rating the episode a 67/100, stating that it is one of the most densely packed pilots on television, he mentioned that it is entertaining but he said that there are many jokes that follow the quality does not win out over quantity saying. He compared Peter to Homer Simpson
Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
and he compared the show to The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
and the King of the Hill
King of the Hill
King of the Hill is an American animated dramedy series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010, on Fox network. It centers on the Hills, a working-class Methodist family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas...
. He criticized the amount of unfunny jokes while he praised the surreal moments. At the end of his review he stated that "Family Guy" is a different kind of animated comedy which sets out to do jokes that other cartoons can’t do, also mentioning that the show had promise to become really funny.
A more negative review came from EW.com's Ken Tucker, who called the animation clunky, which he said made Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
's animation look like state-of-the-art. Tucker also said in his review that he hoped that smart people would use the Family Guy half hour to turn off the television set and start a debate over the air strikes in Kosovo Combine and he also called the show "The Simpsons as conceived by a singularly sophomoric mind that lacks any reference point beyond other TV shows". Even before it aired the pilot received some criticism from the Parents Television Council
Parents Television Council
The Parents Television Council is a U.S. based advocacy group founded by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III in 1995 using the National Legion of Decency as a model...
, a watchdog
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
; the creator of this website L. Brent Bozell III wrote that he initially speculated that Family Guy would be "pushing the envelope".