Plot
Annoyed that Peter spends more time watching television than with his own family, Lois suggests he teach Meg how to drive. Peter reluctantly agrees, and unwittingly gives Meg a series of bad driving tips, including instructing her to "rev" her engine twice at stop lights and challenge other drivers to a race, which causes her to ultimately fail her driving test. As Peter drives them home from the DMV he notices that a show he wanted to watch is on television in a nearby house. Distracted, he crashes the car into a main cable television transmitter, knocking out reception for the entire town of Quahog. Panicking, Peter convinces Meg to take the blame for the cable outage, bribing her with the promise of a new convertible whenever she gets her license. Once they arrive home with the transmitter still attached to the car, Lois becomes furious with Peter for placing the blame on his own daughter. Meg, of course, is blamed. This shows an incredible lack of good judgment and morals by Peter. Meanwhile, Stewie steals the satellite dish in a plan to create a weather control device capable of destroying the world's supply of broccoli, since Lois had forced him to eat the vegetable earlier that day.
Suffering withdrawal syndrome from the lack of cable, Peter straps a television-sized cardboard cutout to himself, making it appear as though his whole world is actually a television program. When Meg can no longer deal with the public scorn, she reveals that her father is really responsible for Quahog's loss of television, causing the town to turn against him. In an attempt to save Peter from further scorn and verbal attacks, Lois gives a heartfelt speech to the community about how television has kept them all from enjoying one another. Inspired by the speech, Peter drags the family to one outdoor activity after another, which quickly exhausts them. Once the family can no longer keep up with him, Peter decides to go off with William Shatner, who has appeared on the Griffin family doorstep after experiencing a flat tire, to a nearby festival. Meanwhile, Stewie's weather machine creates a huge rainstorm. The storm's lightning strike destroys Stewie's weather machine and blows Stewie off the roof and on the ground. While Meg is practicing driving with Lois, the storm causes her to accidentally hit Shatner and Peter, killing Shatner and hospitalizing Peter. As her father recovers, in a full-body cast, he is forced to watch television, causing him to become addicted once again, much to his family's relief.
During the credits, Stewie tries (and fails) to put his plate of broccoli to Brian's plate.
Read more about this topic: I Never Met The Dead Man
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)