That One Time Family Guy Did a Murder Mystery
In September of 2010, Family Guy had its Season 9 premiere. It was a 50-minute special in which the Griffin family – and a good portion of their town – finds itself trapped in a remote mansion with a murderer, a la Christie’s And Then There Were None.
I mean, the episode is titled And Then There Were Fewer.
In all honesty, I’m not sure what compelled me to write about this. Obviously, there are no locked rooms or impossible crimes here. The humor is pretty dated. The mystery not that worth talking about. A part of me wants to claim it’s nostalgia – I was, after all, twelve when I first watched this – and while I remember liking the episode at the time, I didn’t leave any kind of longstanding impression on me. It’s not like Peter Griffin gave birth to my love of mystery fiction.
Still, for some reason, it’s been gnawing in the back of my mind lately. I figured I could make a gag post – where I pretend to recap the episode, but then start making shit up and adding locked room murders of my own.
But as I re-watched the episode, I realized I didn’t have to do that.
There was something interesting to here, as-is.
Before I can get to what I want to talk about, though, I do need to recap the entire episode. I will spoil the entire thing, so if, for whatever reason, you’re dying to see this 13 year-old special, feel free to do so and come back to this. I don’t really know what would compel you to do so, but, y’know. Peter puts on a suit of armor for a one-off gag, I guess?
In general, though, I won’t talk about the humor. Some jokes made me chuckle, I guess. This was before Family Guy had completely given up and started padding with long unfunny ramble segments and Conway Twitty, so you might have a good time. Maybe.
(UPDATE: Nevermind, I was informed that the Conway Twitty gag was well-underway by this point so you’re probably screwed.)
The story opens with Peter receiving an invitation to a dinner in his honor. The sender is unknown, but Peter doesn’t care – free dinner’s free dinner, right?
The entire family – Peter, Lois, Chris, Meg, Stewie and Brian – drives out to a remote mansion resting on a cliff. There, they find that Peter wasn’t the only one who got an identical invitation. As it happens, so did half the town: Joe and Bonnie Swanson. Diane Simmons and Tom Tucker, the hosts of the local news. Quagmire and his random date, Stephanie. Jillian, Brian’s ex-girlfriend, and her husband Derek. Mort and Muriel Goldman, the owners of the town pharmacy. Herbert the Pervert. Adam West, the town mayor. Dr. Hartmann. Seamus, the sailor with wooden stubs for hands and feet. Carl, the video store clerk. The mansion’s caretaker is Consuela, the well-known town maid.
Here they all are (sans Meg and Herbert):
I don’t know why I went through the trouble of annotating them.
The guests are shown to their rooms upstairs and are told to be at dinner at 8.
8 PM arrives and they all gather in the dining room. It is now that their host reveals themselves:
It’s James Woods. He’s carrying a partner in-tow: a woman named Priscilla. With her guidance, he’s become a born-again Christian and decided to make amends to everyone he’s hurt. The invitations, he says, were not misleading – the dinner is in all of their honor, as each of the guests are people he’s looking to apologize to.
After announcing his intent, he and Priscilla leave the dining room, leaving the others to ponder how genuine their host’s intentions actually are. Stephanie proclaims she’s into astrological readings and that she could be “in-tune” with Woods’ energy if she sits in his seat at the head of the table.
Shortly after sitting down, however, she’s shot.
The guests, determining that Woods had gathered them all to kill them, try to escape. A storm is raging outside, however, and they quickly find that the bridge leading from the mansion has collapsed, leaving them trapped. The phone lines have been cut and nobody can get any reception on their phones.
Woods returns, and the guests confront him. He insists that he’s innocent. When they return to the dining room, they find that Stephanie’s body has disappeared.
A blackout occurs. When the lights return, Woods is dead – stabbed in the back with a knife. Priscilla passes out, seemingly from shock.
They soon find that Stephanie’s death was caused by a gun rigged to automatically go off, hidden in the shelf directly facing the head of the table. They conclude that Stephanie’s death was likely an accident – the real target being Woods. The culprit had likely mistimed the shot.
While the group searches around for more clues, Joe – the only police officers among them – is also knocked unconscious when Peter throws himself down the stairs wearing the suit of armor and collapses into him.
The group continues to search the mansion, and find a ledger Woods kept of all his misdeeds. From there, they find that Woods had pressured Muriel into secretly selling him narcotics.
Muriel runs away. The guests split into groups of two. Although everyone sticks together for the most part, Tom and Diane get separated when Tom disappears in a secret passage, and Carl and Meg get separated when Meg falls into a trapdoor.
Eventually, a scream is heard and Muriel is found – dead, in the upstairs hallway.
Everyone regroups in the dining room once more. It is now that Tom and Meg rejoin everyone, having found their way out of their secret passages. This is where the guests discover that Priscilla – who had been left unconscious in the dining room earlier – is nowhere to be found.
Derek realizes he has a faint signal on his phone and goes upstairs to see if he can strengthen it. Everyone stays in the dining room, but a huge fight breaks out, seemingly giving someone the chance to slip away and hit Derek with one of Woods’ Golden Globes.
After finding Derek’s body, the group decides to stick together and search everyone’s rooms. The idea being simple – to find the Golden Globe – the evidence that may now point to the culprit.
They find it in Tom Tucker’s room, under his bed. Worse yet, they realize that there’s blood dripping from the room’s ceiling ventilation shaft. Peter helps Joe reach it, and they find Priscilla’s body – her throat slit.
Tom is determined to be the killer. He’s restrained and, in the morning, taken away by the police.
Lois eventually realizes that the real killer, however, is Diane, Tom’s co-anchor.
It turns out that she had a relationship with Woods, which he broke off after she turned 40. Tom, too, was secretly conspiring against her, planning to replace her with a younger host.
Priscilla, it turns out, was a young, overly-eager intern at the TV station who Diane got to seduce James Woods and push him into becoming a born-again Christian, leading to him organizing the dinner party. She’d rigged the gun in the dining room to kill Woods. The plan was, after she’d shot him, she would retrieve the gun before anyone found the timed contraption, and plant the gun in Tom’s belongings, framing him for the murder.
Since Stephanie died, though, she had to improvise. She stabbed Woods in the dark. Afraid that her fingerprints were still on the knife, she went to get it back when she and Tom separated while searching for Muriel. While she was getting the knife, Priscilla woke up. Diane had no choice but to kill her then and there. She carried her body upstairs and stuffed it in the ceiling of Tom’s room.
This, however, was witnessed by Muriel. Being another witness, she also had to be silenced.
Later, Derek had to die because Diane hadn’t finished framing Tom for the murders. During the commotion in the dining room, she slipped out, grabbed a Golden Globe, killed Derek, and placed the globe back in Tom’s bedroom.
Stephanie’s body disappeared because it was stolen by Quagmire.
With Lois now realizing the truth, Diane intended to kill her. This is intercepted by Stewie, who declares that the only one who gets to kill Lois is him.
End of episode.
Man. I do not like recapping things.
But, rest assured, it was necessary. Not only because I had little faith anyone would actually watch the episode, but also because I’ll now use it to make argument.
Namely, that the presented solution, given the facts, doesn’t work.
Dear Reader, I now pose the following questions to you:
- If Diane’s plan was to have Woods shot and frame Tom for the murder – even if she’d planted the gun in his room, how was anyone supposed to believe he’d actually done it? At the time of the gunshot, everyone was in full view of everyone else. Was the police supposed to believe that the automated contraption had been set, and that Tom had retrieved the gun to hide the contraption’s existence? If so, why did he put it back in his luggage? The far better method would’ve been to use the mansion’s location – it was located on a cliffside. Just throw it in the water! The same goes for the Golden Globe frame-up. Why would he have left it in his room, under his bed? It’s hard to believe. It’s easy to refute – a weak frame job.
- The string of additional murders Diane commits in the episode (specifically, Priscilla and Muriel), seems to come from her wanting to retrieve the knife that she fears may have her fingerprints. But if her plan was to retrieve the gun attached to the timer and plant it – she would’ve had to have, surely, had something to hide her fingerprints with on her from the get-go. She might not have planned for the blackout, she could see clearly enough to grab the knife. Surely, she could’ve taken the extra few seconds to use the handkerchief she would’ve had on-hand earlier.
- If Diane’s expectation was that the police would show up and search everyone’s belongings to find the gun in Tom’s bag – why was she carrying around another gun of her own in her luggage? That’s the gun she uses to threaten Lois at the end of the episode. When was she intending to get rid of it? Why didn’t she use it throughout the episode?
- The episode establishes that to reach the ceiling vent in Tom’s room, Peter had to carry Joe on his shoulders while standing on top of a chest. Even then, Joe had to use a lamp to nudge the ceiling grate open to reveal Priscilla’s body. How did Diane manage to stuff the body in there by herself? How did she carry the body from the dining room to the second floor without being seen and without leaving any blood?
- When the group was in Tom’s room, why did Priscilla’s blood only start conveniently dripping from the ceiling right then? Since she would’ve been dead for a while, there should’ve already been a pool of blood by the time everyone had gathered.
- Would Quagmire have had the opportunity to steal Stephanie’s body? When they witness her being shot, he’s among the people getting in their cars and trying to escape. When everyone returns to the mansion, he’s clearly seen with everyone else – all the way up until the group finds Stephanie’s missing. He would’ve had no opportunity to make her disappear.
- Pointing out this last problem would potentially answer all of the other ones, so I won’t bring it up just yet. But if you’ve been paying attention to the recap, you should’ve noticed a blatant contradiction around Muriel’s murder. I made sure to put in in plain view.
Now, the obvious – and correct – answer to all these questions is: “Dude, it’s Family Guy, what are you doing? There’s literally no point to taking any of it seriously.”
And you would be right. But this is more fun, so for the sake of the argument, let’s assume that these aren’t just silly little mistakes, and that they are, in fact, intentional and that, from them, we can deduce a different truth hidden in the episode. I’ll admit the first two points are relatively easy to explain away – Diane either panicked or assumed her plan would work well enough given the in-universe loose justice system. The reason the questions are asked regardless is to demonstrate that there may be an explanation that explains these points better.
Of course, to make things more interesting, this “different truth” will need to account for why Diane would’ve given a seemingly false confession at the end of the episode. Let’s start with that, then.
The show does ultimately prove, at the very least, that Diane had shown up with the intent of killing James. The fact that she had received a sweater as a gift from her mother ahead of her first solo broadcast – before any of the murders – proves that she expected to be broadcasting solo. Meaning that Tom, in her mind, was leaving the picture. And, of course, more importantly: she was carrying around a loaded gun.
My explanation is relatively simple. With Lois realizing she had every intent to murder, Diane figured she would have to kill Lois to keep herself out of the reach of suspicion. As a result, she may as well have convinced her she was the one behind everything, making the story up on the spot. The reason being that, in Diane’s mind, revealing the actual truth might’ve been more detrimental than pretending she killed everyone herself.
Diane knows the truth, though. She realized it the same way we’ll realize it right now. And she intends to use it to her advantage. Tom might be gone, and she may have gotten more or less what she wanted, but knowing the culprit’s identity carries certain perks she might’ve preferred to keep as close to her chest as possible…
Let’s try constructing a different theory, then. Our starting point will be that Diane is not the culprit.
Of the seven problems posed, let’s start with Question 2. Obviously, since Diane isn’t the culprit, we don’t have to think about her specific argument. But we will take the occasion to determine our true culprit’s character. Decidedly, we will assume that they are careful and cunning – the type of person that wouldn’t risk leaving fingerprints on the knife. As a result, whether it’s Diane or someone else, they have no motive to wander back into the dining room to retrieve the knife. This breaks the chain of events that leads Priscilla to her death.
With that broken, we can now address a portion of Question 4: how was her body carried upstairs without leaving any blood? The simple answer would be that they didn’t – Priscilla could’ve woken up on her own and gone upstairs on her own.
Let’s now switch to Question 1. Again, while Diane not being the culprit does deal with the glaring issues in her own plan, it doesn’t change the fact that the culprit was seemingly intending to frame Tom by planting the Golden Globe and Priscilla’s body in his room – and, apparently, very badly. Was this other culprit originally intending to plan the automated gun in Tom’s room, too? Decidedly not – we’re trying to eliminate problems.
This leads us to believe that the culprit was not actively trying to frame Tom – or anyone, for that matter. The fact that these pieces of evidence ended up in Tom’s room, therefore, must be considered a matter of circumstance, not intent. The killer had left that evidence in the room behind, yes, but likely under pressure or time limitation.
What does this mean? That Tom really did it? Unlikely. Diane’s reaction doesn’t make much sense and – more importantly – raises the question of why Tom would’ve been dumb enough to leave all this stuff lying around.
Okay. So we know that the killer was in Tom’s room. Let’s say that the Golden Globe was left under the bed as a matter of “circumstance”. Why does that actually mean? What kind of circumstance would’ve led the killer to leave the weapon under a bed?
The most obvious answer is that, at the time everyone had entered Tom’s room, the killer had panicked and hidden under the bed. The Golden Globe was in their hand at the time. While people were searching the room, the killer escaped his hiding place and left the Golden Globe behind.
That line of reasoning, though, now creates – ahem – an impossible crime, though, doesn’t it? By this point in time, all of the guests were sticking together and were within each others’ sights the entire time. Therefore, the culprit couldn’t have hidden under the bed ahead of their search. Unless, of course, it was a stranger – an extra person.
But even that doesn’t work, does it? Because to leave the Globe behind, they would’ve had to have crawled up and actually stood in the room – in full view of everyone. Someone, surely, would’ve noticed the odd man out, right? But nobody did. And, indeed, the audience never saw anyone suspicious around, either.
It’s impossible.
And yet, the culprit did it.
Let’s put a pin in that for now.
Following the previous line of reasoning, we can conclude that the culprit has the ability to exist from outside the group. That neatly solves Question 6 – the culprit moved Stephanie’s body while everyone was still panicking and trying to figure out what to do. The body did ultimately end up with Quagmire, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was the one who originally stole it. When the desired effect was achieved, the culprit probably just moved her into the trunk of Quagmire’s car. Quagmire, not wanting any complications, took the body with him.
Understanding Question 6 now answers Question 4. How did the culprit reach the ceiling grate to put Priscilla’s body into it?
They used Stephanie’s body. By this point in time, rigor mortis would’ve surely kicked in, causing her to be as stiff as a board. The culprit could’ve then used her as an actual stepping stone. Of course, it still wouldn’t have been enough to reach the grate on its own – but Stephanie’s body is needed to account for the height. The culprit still would’ve needed help – help provided by Priscilla herself.
After wandering upstairs, the culprit offered to protect her by having her hide in the ceiling. They claimed to have found Stephanie’s body and used it as a stepping stone. The culprit lifted Priscilla up to the grate. She crawled in. When she peeked back out, the culprit pulled on her hair to bring her front torso down and slit her throat.
As it happens, it takes quite some time to actually die after having your throat slit. Priscilla, panicking, shut the grate and retreated into the vent.
Now – why would have Priscilla trusted the culprit to begin with? This, in itself, must be a clue to the culprit’s identity.
Until then, let’s try to answer Question 5. Why did Priscilla start bleeding into Tom’s room so late?
We have now established that Priscilla had likely not died instantly. We had also previously established that the culprit may not have been actively trying to frame Tom Tucker. The fact that Muriel was killed in front of Tom’s room and the fact that the killer hid in Tom’s room later with the Golden Globe proves some relation to Tom, but there’s no reason to think they’re actively looking to frame him.
How about this, then?
The grate Priscilla entered was not in Tom’s room. Instead, the culprit had intended to have her be found in a completely different room. But Priscilla, although her throat was slit, didn’t die immediately – instead, she crawled through the vents, fading in and out of consciousness, until she ultimately heard voices directing her to crawl toward Tom’s room. Unfortunately, that’s when she finally died, her head resting on the grate, causing blood to drip into the room.
There are still some questions left, but let’s try tackling the culprit’s identity. Let’s see what we have so far.
- The culprit must be an outsider.
- At the same time, the culprit must be someone who can naturally blend into the group and not be detected as out of place.
- The culprit must be someone Priscilla would trust.
- The culprit is not actively seeking to frame Tom Tucker.
- The culprit was loitering around Tom’s room, though, likely using it as a hiding place – evidenced by Muriel dying right in front of it (likely because she’d seen the culprit acting suspiciously).
There is one more clue:
Derek, at the time of his death, is shown to recognize his attacker.
Therefore, still paradoxically, the killer must have the face of someone else there.
That explains their escape from Tom’s bedroom. They crawled under the bed, and, at one point, two of the same person were present in the room. Nobody noticed, because everyone’s attention was drawn to the Golden Globe and, later, Priscilla. The culprit must’ve made their getaway relatively quickly during the commotion, as well.
Now, let’s state and answer the last, seventh, question:
How was Tom in two places at the same time?
Look at this screenshot again:
Remember what I told you during the recap. Right before Muriel’s death, Diana and Tom got separated. Meg and Carl got separated.
Also remember that I said that Tom and Meg rejoined the group only after everyone else had met up in the dining room following Muriel’s death.
So, then.
How is Tom visible in this screenshot?
“A continuity error?” Fools. You dare suggest that the prestigious and overworked animators at Family Guy would make an error like that? Preposterous.
In fact, I have more evidence to confirm that this is intentional. Later, when we’re shown flashbacks of Diane’s totally fake confession, we are once again shown her witnessing Tom present here during this scene!
Therefore, there can be no doubt. Tom was there when Muriel’s body was found. And yet, later, he acted as if he’d just come out of the secret passage. If he was doing all of it, it was a stupid gambit.
It’s much more likely that the Tom in the initial discovery and the Tom that emerged from the secret passage are two different people.
The killer is the Tom present at the scene of Muriel’s body’s discovery.
Indeed – the killer is Tom Tucker’s brother!
Tim Tucker!
You think I’m fucking with you. You think this is a joke, don’t you?
Look at the facts, damn it! It all fits!
An outsider who can appear as an insider at any given point in time? A look-alike brother explains it! Why had the culprit set a gun to go off automatically? Because they couldn’t be in the room when the gun went off, lest it be revealed there were two Toms! Why did Priscilla trust Tim? For the same reason she trusted Diane! She was an eager intern wanting to do what she could do impress her superiors! She trusted Tom, not knowing it was Tim! Why did Tim loiter around Tom’s room? Because it was the one actual safe hiding place! If Tom found him there, he still had a chance to explain or convince him for the two to work together!
Stephanie’s death was an accident. Her body was taken to cause confusion – raise distrust of Woods but also raise trust of Tom, as Tom wouldn’t have been able to make her body disappear due to all the panic. James Woods was killed in the dark – Tim had caused the blackout (explaining now that it was not just a convenient opportunity for the culprit, but a solid improvisation).
Muriel died because she walked in on Tim being in Tom’s bedroom. Tim overheard that Tom and Diane were walking around as a pair and, unaware that they had split up, knew that if they ever found Muriel, she would say she found Tom seemingly being in two places at the same time. That’s why he had to kill her. Later, he must’ve seen Diane walking the mansion alone and realized the two had split up, making Muriel’s death tragically senseless. Tim rejoined Diane when they found Muriel’s body, and she quickly realized he wasn’t Tom. Since Tim was also in the broadcasting business, she decided to keep this knowledge to herself, to later use it as blackmail material. That’s why it was more convenient to her to just pretend she was the culprit in front of Lois – especially since she hadn’t yet had the full picture of everything that happened herself.
Priscilla likely died because she spotted Tim moving Stephanie’s body in the upper floor. Although he’d made up an excuse, he quickly realized she had to die – and manipulated her into getting into the ventilation shaft before slitting her throat.
Derek had to die because he couldn’t afford the police getting there before the storm cleared up – otherwise, Tim would’ve been trapped in the mansion and found by the police. After killing him with the Golden Globe, Tim retreated back into Tom’s bedroom – and soon found himself cornered. He hid under the bed. Taking advantage of a moment of inattention by the others, he slipped out and walked amongst the group. There was over a dozen people in there. People already had the image of two Tom Tuckers in their minds – as Tom has a giant poster of himself above his bed.
He made it to the door just in time – right before Meg found the Golden Globe which caused everyone to turn on Tom.
Still don’t believe me, do you?
Ah, but Tim Tucker actually exists as a character! I didn’t make him up!
Nine years after this episode aired, they introduced him in a one-off gag – Season 17, Episode 11!
Indeed! For nine years, the true solution to this mystery was impossible to fully comprehend! But now, we have all the facts! The truth has been revealed!
…
…
…
In 1995, Japanese writer Rintaro Norizuki presented what is now commonly referred to as The Late Queen Problem. If you’ve been to the Honkaku Discord server, you’re likely familiar with the term. It’s the little bit of theory that we’ve greedily latched onto and hold – not because it’s particularly revolutionary; realistically speaking, it’s pretty silly – but it’s a fun little way of looking at mystery fiction.
The problem, as it happens, is actually a pair of problems. I will now state only the first:
Even though the detective may present their deductions and solve the case, can the accuracy of this deduction be proven with certainty?
To more specifically articulate the point, I’ll further quote the article I’ve just linked:
If we cannot prove that the deductions of the detective represent the complete truth, or that the facts as presented are comprehensive, one could be presented with last minute alterations to one element that override our assumptions about the preceding “truth”. In other words, since the existence of additional facts cannot be disproven, there is always the potential for new information that overrides the prior understanding of “how” or “why” a crime was committed, and this new truth can overflow and alter our understanding of the “who”.
…Alright. That probably ties this into a nice little bow, I guess. Maybe.
Christ.