Blue Harvest/Something, Something, Something Dark Side
Unless you've been living in a cave the last few weeks, you may
have noticed that Family Guy are continuing THEIR
Star Wars Saga with the release of Something, Something, Something
Dark Side on December 28th, 2009 (22nd in the USA)
But who
can forget the first instalment, Blue Harvest?
Not me.
Blue
Harvest was the hour-long premiere of the sixth season of
Family Guy. First airing on September 23rd, 2007.
Basically, a parody of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, casting
the show's characters into Star Wars roles. It was made to celebrate
the 30th anniversary of Star Wars and most fans know that the
name "Blue Harvest" was the working title for Return
of the Jedi (if you don't know, shame on you).
Written
by Alec Sulkin and Directed by Dominic Polcino. It guest starred
H. Jon Benjamin, Kirker Butler, Steve Callaghan, Chevy Chase,
Beverly D'Angelo, Mick Hucknall, Rush Limbaugh, Helen Reddy,
Alex Thomas, Don Tai and Judd Nelson.
At the 2007
Comic Con, a series of clips was shown at a panel for Family
Guy from the season premiere episode, parts of this episode
were shown at Star Wars Celebration IV, at which Family Guy
creator Seth MacFarlane, a Star Wars fan since childhood, was
a special guest, and again at Comic-Con International 2007.
The episode was officially endorsed by Lucasfilm, especially
George Lucas, who revealed in his conversation with MacFarlane
that he has TiVoed every single episode of Family Guy without
having to buy the DVDs and, in addition to Jackass, it's the
only show he watches. MacFarlane said they were extremely helpful
when the Family Guy crew wanted to parody their works.
Rush Limbaugh
makes a cameo as the Tatooine radio commentator. Chevy Chase
and Beverly D'Angelo reprise their roles from National Lampoon's
Vacation as Clark and Ellen Griswold. Mick Hucknall of Simply
Red and Helen Reddy also provide their own voices. In the DVD
release, Judd Nelson reprises his role from The Breakfast Club
as John Bender during the Rebels briefing.
It all starts
While the Griffins are watching a television (a golf game with
the two cameramen making remarks about the golfer's wife), the
power goes out and they are left sitting in the dark with no
other form of entertainment. While they wait for the power to
return, Peter decides to tell the story of Star Wars (`Sta Wawz`)
starting with part four, where the characters from Family Guy
are re-imagined as Star Wars characters.
An extremely
expository opening crawl reveals several plot spoilers such
as Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker's father and Princess Leia
being his sister before trailing off to talk about Angelina
Jolie and her movie Gia. Finally, a large Rebel ship is seen
being captured by a Star Destroyer. On the ship are the droids
C-3PO (Quagmire) and R2-D2 (Cleveland). While the ship is boarded
by stormtroopers, Princess Leia (Lois) tries to send an MPEG
to Obi-Wan Kenobi through Artoo, but encounters so many complications
that Artoo offers to deliver the message himself. Leia is captured
by Darth Vader (Stewie) while Artoo and Threepio flee to Tatooine
in an escape pod, where they are captured by Jawa traders.
The droids
are sold to a family of moisture farmers, where nephew Luke
Skywalker (Chris) wishes to join the Rebellion and fight the
evil Empire, all the while enjoying John Williams and the London
Symphony Orchestra performing in the background. While cleaning
the droids that night, Luke stumbles upon Leia's message inside
Artoo, who escapes by the next morning. Luke and Threepio go
out after him and meet Obi-Wan Kenobi (Herbert), who takes the
three to his hut. Leia's message explains that Artoo contains
the plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Star, which
must be sent to her father on her home planet of Alderaan (the
message also mentions a certain "mess" he got into
with the children there). Obi-Wan tells Luke that he must learn
the ways of the Force and accompany him to Alderaan, and gives
him his own lightsaber. Realizing that the Empire would be looking
for the droids, Luke returns home to discover that his home
has been destroyed and his aunt and uncle killed by Imperial
forces, along with John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra,
though Luke is only concerned with Williams' death, since the
film must now be scored by Danny Elfman, whom Luke beheads after
hearing a few seconds of his music (neurotic polka music). Regardless,
the original score plays throughout the rest of the episode.
Luke, Obi-Wan,
and the droids travel to Mos Eisley in search of a ship and
pilot to take them to Alderaan. At a local cantina, they meet
and hire smuggler Han Solo (Peter), "the only actor whose
career wasn't destroyed by this movie", and his Wookiee
co-pilot Chewbacca (Brian), who agree to take them on their
ship, the Millennium Falcon. The group is spotted by stormtroopers
and flees into space, evading pursuing Star Destroyers with
some flashy maneuvers (i.e., listing lazily to the left) before
jumping into hyperspace, traveling through the time vortex tunnel
from the opening of the Tom Baker-era Doctor Who. Meanwhile,
Leia is being held captive on the Death Star, where commanding
officer Grand Moff Tarkin (Mayor West) has Alderaan destroyed
to test the space station's "planet blower-upper gun."
The Millennium
Falcon exits hyperspace into the middle of an Asteroid field
where Alderaan once was. The ship is then captured by the nearby
Death Star's tractor beam and brought into its hangar bay, assisted
by valets. Disguising themselves as stormtroopers (acting "real
cool" to the tune of Minnie the Moocher), Han and Luke
set off to rescue the captive Princess while Obi-Wan leaves
to shut off the tractor beam, but not before performing "(I've
Had) The Time of My Life" with stormtroopers as a farewell
to Luke. Han, Luke, and Chewie head deeper into the Death Star
and rescue Leia, and the four dive into a nearby garbage chute
to escape from the stormtroopers. Ending up in the garbage compactor
(the only instance Meg appears, as the dianoga skulking in the
murky water), they are nearly crushed until Threepio gets high
off of marijuana Artoo gave him earlier and leans against the
off switch. Before they escape, Han and Chewie insist on taking
a couch they found in the garbage with them. Obi-Wan manages
to turn off the tractor beam before he is confronted by Darth
Vader in a lightsaber duel; in it, Obi-Wan's blade falls limp
until he sees Luke, and it becomes erect. Vader strikes Obi-Wan
down as the others board the Falcon and escape, taking their
new couch with them.
Warding
off a group of "Thai Fighters" sent to stop them,
the Falcon journeys to the Rebel base at Yavin IV where the
Death Star plans are analyzed by the Rebels and a weakness is
found. The attack requires a pilot to skim along a trench in
a one-man starfighter to attack a vulnerable exhaust port added
for aesthetics (Vader had ordered it to be boarded up earlier,
but delayed the process to "get estimates"); in addition,
they watch an instructional video featuring Magic Johnson that
explains the strategy. Luke joins the assault team while Han
collects his reward for the rescue (a gift basket with rather
meager prizes) and leaves, much to Luke's dismay. The Rebel
fighters suffer heavy losses (including Redd Foxx, who cries
out, "I'm comin', Elizabeth!" before his ship explodes)
during the assault, though Luke remains piloting one of the
few remaining ships. During his run, Luke hears Obi-Wan's voice
telling him to use the Force, and he turns off his targeting
computer. Darth Vader appears with his own group of fighters
and is about to fire at Luke's ship, when Han arrives in the
Millennium Falcon (sitting comfortably with Chewbacca at his
side on his new couch) and attacks Vader and his wingmen, sending
Vader's ship careening off into space. Guided by the Force,
Luke fires a successful shot into the port which destroys the
Death Star, and he returns to the Rebel base with his friends
to celebrate their victory.
Back in
the Family Guy universe, just after Peter wraps up the story,
the power comes back on in their house. Everyone thanks Peter
for keeping them entertained, though Chris points out that Robot
Chicken already did the same thing three months before (Chris
is voiced by Seth Green, creator of Robot Chicken). A discussion
follows, in which Peter denigrates that show as Chris defends
it. Chris finally leaves the room in frustration as Peter indifferently
hums part of the Star Wars end credits music.
Reviews
of this episode were generally positive. Critically, the Associated
Press's Frazier Moore called it "a dead-on homage that
hilariously picks apart Star Wars, along with much of real life".
Newsday's Diane Werts rendered a more mixed verdict, saying
the episode "veer[s] wildly from bull's-eye satire to gotta-fill-time-now
exposition", and was not as enjoyable for non-Star Wars
fans. Jon Caraminica of the Los Angeles Times felt it worked
by playing to the show's strength, its cutaway gags, by being
"almost entirely an aside". He wondered if the Robot
Chicken conversation at the end was "a note of self-doubt,
maybe, masking as self-awareness." The Parents Television
Council, a group that has frequently criticized Family Guy,
criticized the episode for sexual dialogue that it perceived
to be frequent in the episode, enough for the episode to have
an "S" content descriptor for sexual content; the
episode was rated TV-14-DLV on Fox.
This episode
was been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program
but lost to rival South Park's "Imaginationland".
It also won a Saturn Award for Best Presentation on Television.
So, as we
look forward to "Something, Something, Something, Dark
Side" keep in mind that in February 2009, it
was announced that a table read for a Return of the Jedi
parody was already done. Tentatively titled "We Have
a Bad Feeling About This", its an obviously play off
of "I have a bad feeling about this" which is repeated
many times throughout the Star Wars movies