Even in its seventeenth season, Family Guy continues to be a fun and entertaining show. This season features two 2-part episodes. The season opener finds Brian falling in love with Jess Schlotz (Casey Wilson), and quickly regretting his decision to marry her. Later in the season, Peter becomes a local news anchor whose ability to deliver fake news gets him hired as Trump’s new press secretary in Washington.

There are a lot of other fun storylines this season, including Stewie giving up his life of evil when he makes his first friend, Peter getting life lessons from Tony Robbins, a Honey, I Shrunk The Kids parody with Stewie and Brian getting shrunken down, Carter moving in with the Griffins, Stewie having a near-death experience, Chris heading to vocational school to become a mob-like mechanic, and Meg joining the U.S. Olympics team for the Winter Games. The season also finds Stewie, Brian and Quagmire competing to con a wealthy widowed heiress out of her money, neighbor Herbert mistaking Peter for a chubby child, Peter and Brian becoming the new faces of Pawtucket Ale, Stewie creating a robot clone of Brian and Peter pretending to be transgender to get perks at work. Other storylines for the season include Peter trying to lose weight, Brian suspecting Lois is having an affair, the guys chaperoning high school prom, Quagmire discovering he has a daughter, the Griffins recording a DVD commentary, Lois becoming obsessed with tidying up and throwing things away after reading Tricia Takanawa’s new book, Meg becoming an internet celebrity, and Brian running for mayor.

There are also some great guest appearances this season, including Kyrie Irving, Mandy Moore, Sarah Paulson, Denis Leary, and Sam Elliott. And the season also deals with the death of Peter’s boss Angela (voiced by Carrie Fisher).

The series feels just as fun and fresh as ever, though a few of the “timely” pop culture references at the time the show originally aired already feel a bit dated just a year later. While some may find the show’s sometimes crass humor a bit offensive at times, I thoroughly enjoyed the season. The DVD’s uncensored audio track also restores some F-bombs and other language that was bleeped out or altered for the original broadcast airings.

This DVD set looks and sounds great. I first watched the season in HD on FOX, but the picture quality on the DVD set is quite good. I only noticed some aliasing and/or graininess during scenes where it quickly pans or there is fast motion. The soundtrack nicely captures every line of dialogue, joke, and sound effect, as well as every note of the fun musical numbers and orchestral score. The episodes are presented with the uncensored audio—there is no option to watch as the show originally aired on TV.

The season is split evenly across three DVD discs, each of which offers a play all option, making it easy to binge the episodes. The discs come packed in a standard multi-disc DVD keepcase. This DVD collection also includes a lot of great bonus features, including over 25 minutes of hilarious deleted scenes, a featurette about the show’s cutaway sequences, the original version of the “You Can’t Handle the Booth!” episode without the character commentary, as well as a filmmaker commentary on the aired version of that episode.

I could re-watch these episodes over and over and still find something new to laugh at every time. And seeing them for the first time in their uncensored form creates a whole new viewing experience.

What’s Included:

Episodes: (7:14:54)

• All 20 episodes of the show’s seventeenth season (2018–19):
  Disc 1: “Married… with Cancer”, “Dead Dog Walking”, “Pal Stewie”, “Big Trouble in Little Quahog”, “Regarding Carter”, “Stand by Meg”
  Disc 2: “The Griffin Winter Games”, “Con Heiress”, “Pawtucket Pete”, “Hefty Shades of Gray”, “Trump Guy”, “Bri, Robot”, “Trans-Fat”
  Disc 3: “Family Guy Lite”, “No Giggity, No Doubt”, “You Can’t Handle the Booth!”, “Island Adventure”, “Throw It Away”, “Girl, Internetted”, “Adam West High”
• 480i / Anamorphic Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish French
• Closed Captions

Extras:

• Deleted Scenes (25:21)
  Scenes appear on each disc, along with their corresponding episodes.
  • Disc 1 (9:30)
    • “Married… with Cancer” – 3 scenes
    • “Dead Dog Walking” – 1 scene
    • “Pal Stewie” – 9 scenes
    • “Big Trouble in Little Quahog” – 1 scene
    • “Regarding Carter” – 3 scenes
    • “Stand by Meg” – 1 scene
  • Disc 2 (10:50)
    • “Con Heiress” – 5 scenes
    • “Pawtucket Pete” – 4 scenes
    • “Hefty Shades of Gray” – 9 scenes
    • “Trump Guy” – 3 scenes
    • “Bri, Robot” – 3 scenes
    • “Trans-Fat” – 3 scenes
  • Disc 3 (5:01)
    • “Family Guy Lite” – 2 scenes
    • “You Can’t Handle the Booth!” – 1 scene
    • “Island Adventure” – 4 scenes
    • “Throw It Away” – 2 scenes
    • “Girl, Internetted” – 2 scenes
    • “Adam West High” – 1 scene
• This Reminds Me of That Time… 20 Years of Family Guy’s Greatest Cutaways (9:22)
  The filmmakers talk about the history of the cutaway gags, the writing process, how some of them evolved from the initial pitch, and some of their all-time favorites. Includes interviews with co-executive producer/writer Kevin Biggins, executive producer/writer Steve Callaghan, co-executive producer/director Peter Shin, executive producer/writer Danny Smith, and director John Holmquist.
• “You Can’t Handle the Booth!” Alternate Episode Without Character Commentary (21:14)
  Enjoy the “You Can’t Handle the Booth!” embedded episode in its original form, without the character commentary and recording booth story overlay. The episode finds the whole family getting new cell phones, but Lois worries the family has become obsessed with them, and detached from the real world.
• “You Can’t Handle the Booth!” with Commentary (21:36)
  Executive producers Rich Appel and Alec Sulkin, writer Damien Fahey, director Greg Colton, and producer Shannon Smith talk about the process of putting together this unique meta episode where the Griffins find themselves in a recording booth providing DVD commentary for an “unaired episode”. They discuss the unique challenge of creating both the episode that would be overlayed by the commentary/recording booth story and the commentary itself.

Final Thoughts:

This collection of 20 uncensored episodes (including two 2-parters) is hilarious. Despite being a standard-definition release, the picture and sound quality is nearly on par with the show’s original HD airings. The DVD set contains some really great bonus material including deleted scenes, a featurette, an audio commentary, and a bonus episode, I found myself laughing all over again—this show has great replay value! While this an easy recommendation, I offer a warning to parents that this series contains some adult subject matter, and the DVD set only contains the uncensored audio.