Tonight's Family Guy...

[disgruntled_goat]

I saw an interesting edit on tonight's Family Guy on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

episode plot: Peter gets an endangered bird, then its offspring, stuck living in his new beard. Also, Brian does community service for an old bitter woman who turns out to be a great singer from circa the 40's who enchants brian with her opera singing (although back in the day she was only famous for being a jingle singer).

so at the end, there's a big musical number (true FG style).
during this number, there's a verse about the end of the world and how no one knows in just what form it will come. Brian is there doing something like a tarot reading. Each tarot(-ish) card he plays is a single type of disaster which could end the world (I.e. the 1st card is a mushroom cloud, the second card is a tsunami, and so on). They show the cards on screen as he flips them, and the final card says "G. W. Bush" and has a drawing of whistle-ass holding a beer bong (yes it was hysterical).

*this is not how this episode was originally released*

Originally, the final tarot card was a pic of a Jerry Springer ruckus. I have an old copy of the original to this effect.

So, AFAICT, this means that sometime since the cancellation of Family Guy, some ballsy badass went back and re-edited it to take a well-deserved swipe at Bush.

Kudos. FG rocks the hardest.

[anti_shrub]

1. I was wondering about that

I wasn't able to follow the third season due to it getting bounced around the Fox schedule, but I thought the GW BUSH thing seemed out of place as the episode was obviously from the "Bush is an idiot but he's harmless" aka pre-9/11 era, as illustrated by the quick flash of the World Trade Center right before. Don't get me wrong, I laughed out loud at it, but it did seem out of place.

Now my only question is which version made it to the Season 3 DVD set coming out next week?

[ryharrin]

2. Its coming out next week?!!!!!

That's awesome! I've been waiting for it ever since I got the first/second season DVDs. I hope they have the Stewie/Bin Laden bit on the last DVD set. In retrospect it seems downright prescient.

[w13rd0]

3. Actually...

...as per: http://www.tvtome.com/FamilyGuy/guide.html

"During the musical number on the FOX version, one of the tarot cards was changed from George W. Bush to Jerry Springer. Also the World Trade Center towers were digitally removed after 9/11 (the same reason why the George W. Bush tarot card was changed to Jerry Springer). Both of these deleted parts have been shown on Cartoon Network."

So, originally it WAS GWB, but after 911, they changed it to Jerry Springer, since associating Bush with catastrophe and the end of the world was just TOO close to home...