Reception
"420" was viewed by 7.40 million viewers on its original airdate, receiving a rating of 4.3/6 in Nielsen ratings. The character Brian was awarded the 2009 Stoner of the Year award by the magazine High Times due to this episode, marking the first time an animated character received the honor.
The episode received generally positive reviews from critics. Ahsan Haque of IGN rated the episode an 8.5/10, commenting that it "worked out quite well mainly due to the superb musical number". He called the storyline "pretty cohesive" with a "very few truly random jokes thrown in here", though he did criticize the killing of the cat as "over-the-top" and the large amount of blood which he called "disturbing". Genevieve Koski of The A.V. Club stated that the episode "showed admirable restraint with its pot-centric plot", and called the musical number "truly spectacular". She graded the episode B, behind the Simpsons episode “The Good, the Sad, and the Drugly” which received a rating of B+; and the American Dad! episode “Delorean Story-an” which received a rating of A. The TV Critic's Robin Pierson gave the episode a 54/100; in his review, he appreciated the plot structure, especially the randomness of Peter's list of hated cultural icons. He did, however, criticize the featured musical number; he referred to it as a "waste of time" and claimed that "jokes about Texans, Michael Jackson, and Helen Keller are so obvious."
The Parents Television Council, a frequent critic of Family Guy and series creator Seth MacFarlane, branded a June 6, 2009 re-airing their "Worst TV Show of the Week", due to its emphasis on the legality of cannabis.
Read more about this topic: 420 (Family Guy)
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