The animated American sitcom, Family Guy, released in 1999, has been around for more than two decades now. After quite some bumping, the show struggled to gain an audience, especially from its first three seasons. Fox canceled the show in 2002. However, after gradually outspreading among teenagers and college students, Fox revived it again in 2005 and still happens to be one of the most highly watched American TV series.
The show revolves around Peter and his wife, Lois Griffin, along with their family of two teenagers, a smart dog, and an iniquitous baby who find themselves in some of the most hysterical situations. The show consists of 19 long and fulfilling seasons. With over 300 episodes, here are 25 episodes from Family Guy that we think are the best, listed chronologically, below with their IMDB ratings.
1. Death is a Bitch (8.3/10)
- Season 2 Episode 6
Peter Griffin finds himself in a tough spot when he has to pay a large hospital bill. He does everything in his capacity to get himself out of paying it. In episode 6 of season 2, he goes to the length of declaring himself as dead to get out of it. But just as we see in life, all actions have consequences. Here, too, Death shows up at Peter’s doorsteps to take him in. But as Death starts running after Peter in order to get a hold of him, he trips and twists his ankle. Peter gets struck with a realization that nothing is eternal, and the entire Quahog breaks into mayhem. In order to get things back to normal, Peter needs to take over Death’s job and bring everything back on track.
2. Da Boom (8.3/10)
- Season 2 Episode 3
Family Guy may be one of the lesser interesting TV shows available on Netflix right now, but it does have some gem of episodes. In Da Boom, they showed what Quahog looked like after the Y2K bug destroyed the world. But even amidst the ruining, Peter finds ways to make things more difficult, which is hilarious and very relatable on personal levels. It was also in this episode that the legendary feud between Peter Griffin and Ernie, the Giant Chicken, was launched, and the show gained huge popularity.
3. Road to Rhode Island (8.3/10)
- Season 2 Episode 13
This episode of Family Guy beautifully showcases the romantic relationship between Stewie and Brian. When the duo gets lost after their plane tickets are stolen, they need to get back home before Lois finds out. The road trip back to Quahog is filled with an explosion of different emotions as the pair tries to track down Brian’s mother, which digs deeper into the characters’ personal space.
4. Lethal Weapons (7.3/10)
- Season 3 Episode 7
‘Lethal Weapons’ had some interesting plots involved in it. More contemporary from the rest of the lot, this Family Guy episode involved important moments like Lois learning martial arts and taking a stand for herself, crude New Yorkers were trying to see changing colors in leaves in Rhode Island, and a typical Family Guy style breakout of violence.
5. To Love and Die in Dixie (8.2/10)
- Season 3 Episode 12
Family Guy brings this absolute show of an episode as it constantly has something or the other going on in it. It involves several things like the entire family being on witness protection in the Deep South after Chris becomes witness to a crime. Chris mistakes a Southern girl for a boy who he eventually falls in love with, which ends up in an overwhelming, fated separation. Peter makes a mess out of a Civil War enactment while Stewie starts a funk band.
6. Petarded (8.3/10)
- Season 4 Episode 6
With Season 4 being, debatably, the best season of Family Guy, Petarded is another of Peter Griffin’s typical crazy episode. After winning a game of Trivial Pursuit, he instantaneously claims himself a genius.
In this episode, Peter is declared as a retard (thus, Petarded) after he is challenged to apply for a MacArthur Genius Grant. He tries to exploit his diagnosis and reaches the extent of losing his children’s custody to Cleveland.
7. PTV (8.6/10)
- Season 4 Episode 14
Family Guy has always had the edgiest relationship with the censor board. It has never laid low or subtle whenever the film industry was to be in the picture. In this Family Guy episode, Peter starts his personal, uncensored TV network. However, things quickly get out of hand, and Lois has to order the FCC to close the network. This is arguably the funniest as well as the most real episode of Family Guy. This episode also contains one of the best original songs from Family Guy.
8. I Take Thee Quagmire (7.5/10)
- Season 4 Episode 21
This is one of the darkest yet brilliant episodes of Family Guy. Quagmire, though utterly hilarious, is the dirt of a person and is filled with filth for morales. In this episode, he appears to be falling in loving with Peter’s maid and changing for good. He decides on marrying Joan but soon wants out. But she will kill both of them if he leaves her. Hence, he very cleverly fakes his own death so that Death spares him and takes Joan instead.
9. Meet the Quagmires (8.4/10)
- Season 5 Episode 18
This episode of Family Guy explores an alternate universe where Peter and Lois do not end up together, which they find out after they travel back in time. Instead, Quagmire and Lois get married. The relationship shown between Peter and Lois in this episode is very warm and wholesome, unlike their relationship towards the latter half of the show. The end of the episode is marked by a tribute to Back To The Future and a Never Gonna Give You Up performed by Brian.
10. Blue Harvest (8.2/10)
- Season 6 Episode 1
In Episode 1 of Season 6, the power goes off in Quahog when Peter narrates A New Hope from Star Wars IV. The Family Guy characters act out the characters from Star Wars. Although this episode can be a task if you are not a Star Wars fan, it is still worth mentioning.
11. Believe it or not, Joe’s Walking on Air (7.4/10)
- Season 6 Episode 3
After Joe gets a pair of new legs, he starts walking. Naturally, he soon becomes contemptible and disliked by the rest. The episode ends with Peter and the lot concluding that Joe was more likable when he was a cripple. Although a mean-spirited episode, the humor trumps the rest.
12. Stewie kills Lois (8.4/10)
- Season 6 Episode 4
This episode spews around Stewie’s obsession with killing Lois. He, thus, manages to kill Lois by shooting her right in her head. But after a year, it comes to the picture that Lois had heavy life insurance. The suspicion of her murder shifts to Peter, and he goes on trial after Stewie accidentally implicates Peter and steers clear of the crime. However, just before he is sentenced to death, Lois shows up in the courtroom to take revenge on Stewie.
13. Lois kills Stewie (8.4/10)
- Season 6 Episode 5
In this second part of the season opener, Lois returns as Stewie becomes the world’s autocratic president. Lois realizes that only she can stop Stewie’s oppression of the world by putting an end to him. The confrontation leads to an interesting fight. However, Lois steps back as she cannot kill her own son, but Peter does the job on her behalf.
14. McStroke (7.6/10)
- Season 6 Episode 8
More often than not, Family Guy episodes seem more like compilations of jokes rather than an actual plot. McStroke is one of those episodes where a weird combination of things happen like Peter getting a stroke, him growing a mustache, and also exposes a corporation running fast food joints. Stewie starts attending school with Chris and Meg and soon becomes the most popular kid. Although the episode feels like a convulsive clump of sections, the humor still makes it quite watch-worthy.
15. I Dream of Jesus (8.0/10)
- Season 7 Episode 2
In this episode of Family Guy, Peter actually discovers Jesus working at a record store. Jesus takes down the president, George W Bush, in the process of revealing himself to the world under Peter’s pressure. But the real reason why this is one of the best Family Guy episodes is because of Peter’s racing muffle, ‘Surfin Bird’, as he shoehorns people in an annoying Trashmen tune of the 1950s.
16. Road to Germany (8.1/10)
- Season 7 Episode 3
This is another episode on time travel where Brian and Stewie, and Mort Goldman land up in 1939 Poland. As they struggle to return to the present, the trio lands up in London and Berlin while Stewie disguises himself as Hitler in order to steal Uranium. However, Stewie and Hitler’s mirror face-off is funny and one to watch before they actually return to the present.
17. Road to the Multiverse (9.1/10)
- Season 8 Episode 1
Of the many “Road to…” episodes from Family Guy, Road to the Multiverse is undoubtedly the best of the lot. In fact, it is considered to be the most popular episode from the entire series. In the first episode of Season 8, Stewie and Brian time travel yet again to multiple alternate universes. They even witness Disney versions of themselves in one.
Ultimately, they decide to stay back in a universe completely different from theirs where humans obeyed dogs and animals sang. Brain loved the universe and broke the time-traveling machine so that they could stay there forever. But in the end, they are rescued by the other Stewie and Brian duo.
This episode of Family Guy is known for its experimentation and humor, which is why it is also considered to be the show’s best episode.
18. Something, Something, Something, Dark Side (7.7/10)
- Season 8 Episode 20
In this episode of Family Guy, just like Blue Harvest, the electricity goes off, and Peter narrates the story of The Empire Strikes Back while the characters from Family Guy replaced the Star Wars’ characters.
19. And then there were fewer (8.6/10)
- Season 9 Episode 1
In the premiere of Season 9, James Wood invites a number of people over to his mansion for a dinner party. However, inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the guests kept mysteriously disappearing from the dinner table, leaving only a few towards the end. The episode is from before James Wood was socially outcasted and still made quite the impression.
20. Road to the North Pole (8.3/10)
- Season 9 Episode 7
Of the many Family Guy episodes starring Stewie and Brian’s duo, Road to the North Pole is a Christmas special where the two of them find an almost dead Santa and decide on completing his job of distributing the gifts. A chain of dark comedic experiences unravel throughout the episode, but the ending delivers a genuine message about materialism and greed, which makes it one of the best episodes of Family Guy.
21. Back to the Pilot (8.8/10)
- Season 10 Episode 5
This is another of Brian-Stewie’s episodes, full of humor, drama, and sheer genius. Brian and Stewie travel back in time using a time machine and joke and judge their former selves in the show. When Brian tells the past Brian about 9/11, their present gets altered a civil war breaks out. As they prevent themselves from going back, they produce multiple versions of themselves simultaneously. With some genuinely funny Brian and Stewie moments, the Back to the Pilot episode is very clever and neatly scripted concerning time travel.
22. Lois Comes Out of her Shell (7.4/10)
- Season 11 Episode 6
After Peter makes an extremely poor toast at Lois’ birthday, she goes through a mid-life crisis. She completely transforms into a different who is fun to be around and likable by Peter, but eventually, it gets difficult for him to keep up.
23. Roads to Vegas (7.9/10)
- Season 11 Episode 21
In this episode of Family Guy, Stewie and Brian transport themselves to Las Vegas, which makes the machine create another pair of them. Both the pairs go about Vegas unknown about each other. While one of them makes a fortune, the other loses everything to the extent of being indebted to loans—another episode showing this duo as the heart and soul of the TV show.
24. The Simpson Guy (8.4/10)
- Season 13 Episode 1
For the longest time, The Simpsons and Family Guy, being the two most popular animated shows, were known to have a discreet rivalry. Therefore, it took the viewers quite by surprise when they decided to do a crossover for both the shows. In the episode, the Griffins stay over at the Simpsons after their car gets stolen. However, after a dispute breaks off between Peter and Homer, they both split in a very civil manner. The episode is an epitome of what sets the two shows apart and what their strengths and weaknesses are, ultimately making the episode an epic success.
25. Baking Bad (7.9/10)
- Season 13 Episode 3
This is the episode where Lois and Peter decide on opening a cookie shop. But despite Peter’s genuine intentions, he slowly transforms the shop into a strip club. Brian intervenes in Stewie’s stuffed animals while Stewie grows an addiction to cough syrup.
Family Guy has been one of the most controversial shows on television, with Fox banning one of their episodes (Partial Terms of Endearment) as the episode displayed abortion, which has always been a controversial topic. But for the very reason that Family Guy has never backed away from controversial aspects of society, the show has been a people’s favorite even decades after its release.
These are the best Family Guy episodes for binge-watching for viewers. So grab your Cola and start watching.
- Directors:David Zuckerman, Peter Shin
- Writers:Seth MacFarlane, Chris Sheridan, Danny Smith, Neil Goldman, Garrett Donovan, Mike Barker, Matt Weitzman, Ricky Blitt, Gary Janetti, Craig Hoffman, Steve Callaghan, David Collard, Ken Goin, Bobby Bowman, Jim Bernstein, Michael Shipley, Mike Henry, Mark Hentemann, Alex Borstein, Alex Barnow, Marc Firek, Allison Adler, John Viener, Alec Sulkin, David Zuckerman, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Andrew Goldberg, Daniel Palladino, David A. Goodman, Tom Devanney, Teresa Hsiao, Spencer Porter, Matt Fleckenstein, Ted Jessup, Wellesley Wild, Julius Sharp, Brian Scully, Deepak Sethi, Kirker Butler, Patrick Meighan, Aaron Blitzstein, Marc Firek, Mike Desilets, Artie Johann, Shawn Ries, Gene Laufenberg, Anthony Blasucci, David Ihlenfeld, Alex Carter, Andrew Gormley, David Wright
- Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Mila Kunis, Seth Green, Alex Borstein, Ryan Reynolds
- IMDb:1/10
- Platforms Available: Netflix, Disney Plus Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes Store, Hulu, fuboTV, Google Play, YouTube, VUDU, FOX
