The thirteenth season of Family Guy has arrived on DVD and contains another hilarious 18 episodes of the series. The season starts starts off with a bang with the long-awaited crossover with The Simpsons. This double-length episode was all that I could have hoped for—it is so much fun to see these two sets of characters in the same world, and it looks and feels so natural. I loved the interactions between Peter and Homer, Stewie and Bart, Brian and Chris and Santa’s Little Helper, Meg and Lisa and Lois and Marge—as well as the numerous other Simpsons characters that make appearances. The writers did an excellent job mixing in iconic moments and catchphrases from both shows, while also including a lot of fun self-deprecating humor that breaks the fourth wall and addresses the non-existent animosity between the shows.

There are a lot of other great storylines this season as well including Lois and Peter open a cookie store and hire strippers to promote it, Peter and Brian try to find a replacement turkey on Thanksgiving, Peter sets out to help Jesus lose his virginity, Peter and Cleveland start a detective agency, Peter and his friends try to make a viral video, Liam Neeson calls Peter out on his claim that he can beat him in a fight, and Peter has his friends throw him a roast not realizing the biting nature of the humor.

Other stories include Stewie becomes addicted to cough medicine, Stewie decides to live at a folk festival, and Stewie becomes pregnant with Brian’s baby. Meanwhile, Brian becomes an exercise nut for his new girlfriend, Brian gets some huge new teeth and becomes a real-estate agent, Brian attends obedience school after biting Peter, and Brian discovers that he has a low IQ. Also, Stewie and Brian take Chris back in time to the Titanic, Carter watches the children while Peter and Lois are away on “vacation” in the Bahamas, Meg becomes a foot fetish model, Meg discover’s she’s the most attractive woman working at the airport, Chris falls in love with a mannequin, Quagmire’s born-again Christian mother comes to visit, Cleveland becomes a therapist, and Joe decides to ride Niagara Falls.

There are some great guest appearances this season, including Julie Bowen, Liam Neeson, Maya Rudolph, Chris Hardwick, Emily Osment, T.J. Miller, Lea Thompson, Allison Janney, Connie Britton, and Tony Sirico.

This DVD set looks and sounds amazing. I first watched the season in HD on FOX, but the picture quality on the DVD set is nearly perfect, and the soundtrack successfully captures every line of dialogue, joke, sound effect as well as every note of the 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. This DVD collection also includes a lot of great bonus features, including over 13 minutes of hilarious deleted scenes, 6 audio commentaries, a featurette for the Simpsons crossover, an animatic episode, and more.

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 adds a whole new experience. The series is better than ever—this set comes highly recommended for both casual and die-hard fans of the show.

What’s Included on the DVD:

Episodes: (418 min)

• All 18 Uncensored Episodes of Season 13 (2014-15):
  Disc 1: “The Simpsons Guy”, “The Book of Joe”, “Baking Bad”, “Brian the Closer”, “Turkey Guys”
  Disc 2: “The 2000-Year-Old Virgin”, “Stewie, Chris, & Brian’s Excellent Adventure”, “Our Idiot Brian”, “This Little Piggy”, “Quagmire’s Mom”, “Encyclopedia Griffin”
  Disc 3: “Stewie is Enceinte”, “Dr. C & the Women”, “#JOLO”, “Once Bitten”, “Roasted Guy”, “Fighting Irish”, “Take My Wife”

• Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English DD 5.1, Spanish Surround DD 2.0
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French, Portuguese
• Closed Captioned

Extras:

• Commentary On Select Episodes
  The creators, writers, directors, producer and cast members provide interesting and entertaining commentaries on 6 of the season’s episodes. I like that the show brings in folks from all kinds of job roles so you get a lot of different perspectives and fun behind-the-scenes info and stories in these commentaries. That said, it would be great if they could get more of the cast involved in these commentaries, because Alex Borstein was a lot of fun to listen to.
  • “The Simpsons Guy” (44:15)
    Commentary by executive producer Rich Appel, co-executive producer/writer Patrick Meighan, co-executive producer/director Peter shin, producer Shannon Smith and executive producer/director from The Simpsons David Silverman. (Some of this is repetitive with the behind-the-scenes featurette for the episode.)
  • “Turkey Guys” (21:41)
    Commentary by executive producer Steve Callaghan, co-executive producer/writer Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, director Julius Wi, character designer Mick Cassidy and retakes production supervisor Michael Upperco.
  • “The 2000-Year-Old Virgin” (21:32)
    Commentary by executive producer Rich Appel, writer/producer Ted Jessup, director Joseph Lee, editor Mike Elias and star Alex Borstein.
  • “Stewie, Chris, & Brian’s Excellent Adventure” (21:39)
    Commentary by executive producer Steve Callaghan, writer/co-executive producer Alex Carter, director Joe Vaux, assistant director Mark Covell and character designer Sharon Ross.
  • “Once Bitten” (21:42)
    Commentary by executive producer Steve Callaghan, director Joseph Lee, producer Kim Fertman, writer/executive story editor Anthony Blasucci and animation associate producer Brent Crowe.
  • “Roasted Guy” (21:38)
    Commentary by executive producer Rich Appel, writer/producer Andrew Goldberg, director Joe Vaux, producer Shannon Smith and storyboard artist Annie Brown.
• Deleted Scenes (13:28)
  An nice collection of 81 fully-completed and uncensored deleted scenes from every episode—there is a lot of really fun material included here! Each disc has a Play All option, or you can select to watch the deleted scenes for a specific episode.
  The breakdown is as follows:
  Disc 1 (5:25): “The Simpsons Guy” (7 scenes, 1:36), “Book of Joe” (4 scenes, 1:14), “Baking Bad” (1 scene, :14), “Brian the Closer” (3 scenes, :48), “Turkey Guys” (6 scenes, 1:33)
  Disc 2 (8:03): “The 2000-Year-Old Virgin” (6 scenes, 1:28), “Stewie, Chris, & Brian’s Excellent Adventure” (5 scenes, 2:02), “Our Idiot Brian” (4 scenes, :39), “This Little Piggy” (3 scenes, :38), “Quagmire’s Mom” (5 scenes, 1:44), “Encyclopedia Griffin” (4 scenes, 1:32)
  Disc 3 (9:28): “Stewie is Enceinte” (5 scenes, 1:36), “Dr. C & the Women” (2 scenes, :59), “#JOLO” (6 scenes, 1:55), “Once Bitten” (4 scenes, 1:44), “Roasted Guy” (4 scenes, 1:04), “Fighting Irish” (1 scene, :15), “Take My Wife” (7 scenes, 1:55)
• On the Road To Springfield: The Making of “The Simpsons Guy” (12:44)
  The cast and creators talk about how the episode came about and the challenges and joys of combining the worlds and characters of these two iconic shows. Includes animatics, footage from the table read and interviews with co-showrunners/executive producers Steve Callaghan and Richard Appel, showrunner/executive producer of The Simpsons Al Jean, writer/co-executive producer Patrick Meighan, producer Shannon Smith, animation associate producer Brent Crowe, director/co-executive producer Peter Shin, director/executive producer of The Simpsons David Silverman, supervising director Dominic Bianchi, and star Alex Borstein (“Lois Griffin”).
• Full Episode Animatic on “Stewie, Chris, & Brian’s Excellent Adventure” (22:03)
  Watch the entire episode in its original animatic form, including some material that didn’t make it into the final cut.
• Baby Ways (2:24)
  Montage of scenes of Stewie being a child throughout the series.
• Who Let the Dog Out (2:15)
  Montage of scenes of Brian acting like a dog.

Final Thoughts:

This collection of 18 uncensored episodes (one of which is a double-length crossover with The Simpsons) is hilarious. Despite being a standard-definition release, the picture and sound quality is on par with the show’s original HD airing. The DVD set contains some really great bonus material including audio commentaries, deleted scenes, a featurette, an animatic and more. Re-watching the episodes on this DVD set, 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.