Recap / Family Guy S 2 E 8 I Am Peter Hear Me Roar

Original air date: 3/28/2000 (produced in 1999)

Production code: 2ACX-02

Feeling emboldened after drunkenly doing stand-up comedy, Peter starts telling jokes at work...and gets in trouble for telling a sexist joke to a woman. In order to keep his job, Peter attends a sexual harassment seminar showing how to speak to and treat women in the workplace. When that fails, Peter is sent to a women's only trust retreat...and comes back a more sensitive (and effeminate) man.

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"I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar" contains examples of:

• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Peter thinks he's a comedian after telling jokes at a comedy club. It turns out that none of the audience members found him funny and were only laughing at him because it looked like he wet himself.
• Book Ends: The episode features a flashback showing Peter watching "Three's Company" loudly while Lois suffers from morning sickness and ends with Lois making Peter a sandwich post-coitus while he is back to his misogynist self watching "Three's Company".
• Bowdlerization: At least one FOX rerun of this episode muted the word "dump" when Peter tells Mr. Weed that the Sarah who reported Peter for cracking his "Why do women have boobs?" joke is the same one he videotaped taking a dump in the women's bathroom.
• Brain Bleach: Stewie's horrified reaction to Peter's attempt at breastfeeding.
• Characterization Marches On: Peter was pretty negligent and sexist in the earlier seasons and his sexual harassment is nowhere near as bad as the subsequent episode where his boss Angela tried to have sex with him.
• Clothing Damage: Lois and Gloria tear and damage each other's clothes during the fight.
• Comically Missing the Point: Peter thinks he's a comedian while telling jokes at a comedy club. The truth is, Peter is actually drunk, holding a beer bottle in his pocket and it spills, amusing the audience because it looked like he wet himself. This doesn't stop Peter from telling his tasteless jokes.
  • He did it earlier by trading a boat for a mystery box's contents.
  Peter: Now hold on, Lois! A boat's a boat, but the Mystery Box could be anything! It could even be a boat!
  • Lois thinking "Women drinking beer" (rather than "Girl on Girl Is Hot") is a typical male fantasy after seeing the Pawtucket Patriot Beer commercial.
• Continuity Nod: Peter starts a cutaway that happened in the episode about winning a boat after Lois berates him for his stupidity. Lois reminds him that it happened ten minutes ago, making it one of the times when a Cutaway Gag makes a reference to something that happened earlier in the episode.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: The workplace conduct video for the Happy-Go-Lucky Toy Factory is wildly outdated, describing women as "emotionally fragile" and giving such advice to placate them as complimenting them, even if they're homely and unkempt and congratulating them for a job well done by giving them an open-palmed slap on the behind.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: During the initial sensitivity training, Peter completely botches a role-playing exercise (where the man is supposed to thank the woman and say she's a great asset to the company) by saying he will get her a raise if she comes to work without a shirt on. It gets worse from there.
  Gloria: Mr. Griffin!
  Peter: I'm sorry. That came out wrong. Let me try again. Nice ass!
  Gloria: You haven't heard a word I've said.
  Peter: Now, that's not fair. I've heard everything you said. It's just, y'know, there's some subtleties to the role that aren't so easy to understand. [suddenly squeezes her breast] Honk, honk.
• Dirty Old Woman: And Dirty Old Man; Lois is understandably horrified when she learns Peter taped over their wedding tape with softcore porn, seeing as she sent a copy of it to her great aunt. The ensuing cutaway reveals that her great aunt and the rest of the old folks at the rest home love it.
  Old Lady: This wedding is hot!
  Old Man in wheelchair: (punching his groin) Wake up, dammit! Wake up!
• Everyone Chasing You: When Peter's Take That! ends up Mistaken for Racist, it Smash Cuts to an overhead shot of him running down the street with the Million Man March chasing after him.
• Failed a Spot Check: Peter's attempt at peeping on women changing in a locker room. He's standing in an empty corner and merely covered his face with a piece of wood that has a hole in it. Somehow, the three women didn't notice him until he started talking.
• Fanservice Faux Fight: Played With. The fight is real but filled with Fanservice. Gloria and Lois start fighting all over the place, with their clothes ruined and their cleavage exposed which Peter finds enjoyable.
• Flirtatious Smack on the Ass The workplace conduct video claims that "nothing says 'Good job!' like a firm, open-palm slap on the behind."
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: When the female counselor supports one of the women with a hand to the shoulder, Peter suggests they hug and slowly escalate from there. Later, it's seeing Lois and Gloria fighting that causes Peter to revert to his old self.
  • Also, the fake commercial at the start of the episode ("Pawtucket Patriot Beer: If you buy it, hot women will have sex in your backyard") and the softcore prison porno that Peter taped on his wedding video.
• Gone Horribly Right: At the beginning, Gloria sends Peter to a women's retreat and Lois agrees with this, hoping he'll respect women and discover his more "sensitive side". However, it works too good as Peter arrives home behaving like a woman and almost believing he himself to being a woman.
• Halfway Plot Switch: The episode goes from Peter hoping to win his boat prize to Peter thinking he's good at stand-up to Peter becoming more sensitive following a work-mandated trip to a women's bonding retreat in order to avoid being fired for sexual harassment.
• Hypocrite: When Peter calls all the women on the bus ride "his angels", he refuses a fat woman and calls her "Bosley" despite himself also being fat.
• Idiot Ball: Peter is actually dumb enough here to obliviously tell a sexist joke right to a woman's face.
• I Ate WHAT?!: Stewie is appalled when he wakes up to find that he was suckling from his father Peter's nipple and finds a hair in his mouth.
• Innocently Insensitive: Peter wasn't trying to be offensive when he told the "why do women have boobs" joke. He told the joke to his female co-worker because everyone else laughed at it. Ironically, what results from this also leads him to be Mistaken for Racist at one point.
• Instantly Proven Wrong:
  • After getting the mailer for the free boat, Peter boasts that he'll be the first one on Spooner Street to have his own boat. Cue Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe saying they also got the mailer and being excited about getting a free boat.
    Peter: Well, at least I'll be the fattest guy on Spooner Street to get a boat.
    Fat Albert: Hey, hey, hey! I'm gettin' a boat!
  • After botching things at the meeting, Peter openly doubts anyone could resist the lure of the mystery box. He and Lois then see Quagmire, Cleveland, and Joe enjoying their new boats.
• Jerkass: Gloria Ironbachs. As if putting Peter through an intensive women's retreat that warped his entire personality (over him telling a sexist joke) wasn't enough, she also blames Lois for Peter's sexist behaviour because Lois wanted to be a wife and mother (of her own free will).
• Laughing at Your Own Jokes: Peter, at a comedy club. He thinks the audience is laughing at his jokes but they're really laughing at the fact that he put his beer in his pants pocket, spilling the liquid and making it look like he urinated his pants.
• Mama Bear: It's Gloria mocking her children that causes Lois to snap.
  Gloria: I can't imagine how screwed up your kids must be.
  Lois: You... bitch.
• Mistaken for Gay: After Peter completes sensitivity treatment, he becomes more sensitive and feminine like a woman, causing everyone who sees and talks to him to think he's like a woman.
  Chris: Oh my God, Dad's a chick!
• Mistaken for Racist: Following his extreme feminist indoctrination, Peter goes with Cleveland to a Million Man March and ends up on the podium, where he loudly proclaims that everyone present is the problem with society. He’s actually referring to men in general, but since everyone in the crowd is black, and his words are distressingly close to common negative stereotypes about black people, Peter's rant is taken the wrong way.
  Peter: I'd like to say a couple of truths to the men in this audience! It’s your fault we have so much crime in this country, and it’s your fault we have so much violence in this country! You are ruining our society and you should be ashamed!
  (Cue a skyshot view of Peter running down the street with a horde of angry black men chasing after him.)
• My God, What Have I Done?: Peter, after telling a sexist joke to a female co-worker.
• My X Is AY: After Peter becomes more sensitive to women, he puts a bumper sticker on his car that reads: "My other penis is a vagina".
• Mystery Box: Peter wins a boat and a chance to trade it for whatever is inside a mystery box. Unlike the other boat winners, Peter chooses the box.
• N-Word Privileges: During the Huck Griffin cutaway, Jim condemns the child for using "our word," despite Huck's insistence he thought it was just his name.
  Huck: Could you pass me the oar, N-Word Jim?
  Jim: Thank you.
• One-Steve Limit: The woman's name in the 1956 Women in the Workplace video is named Muriel, not to be confused with Muriel Goldman, who would later become a recurring character on the show.
• Rage Breaking Point: Gloria believes Lois is the reason for Peter's attitude towards women and says her kids might be just as messed up. This prompts Lois to call her a bitch and get in a cat fight with her.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Discussed — Gloria passive-aggressively prods Lois for her supposed lack of ambition or autonomy in choosing to raise a family over pursuing her own career. Lois isn't having any of it.
  Gloria: Peter tells me you don't have a career of your own.
  Lois: Oh, no, life outside my kitchen is so bright and scary. I'm just here because you caught me between pregnancies.
  Gloria: Well, I'm sorry you're so hostile toward someone who's fighting so a woman like you can become more than just a housewife.
  Lois: Oh, "just a housewife"? Look, I'm all for equality, but if you ask me, feminism is about choice. I choose to be a wife and mother. And now I'm choosing to end this conversation.
• Recognition Failure: Peter thinks Fat Albert is Della Reese.
• Sensitivity Training: Ironbachs has Peter is sent to a sensitivity training class taught by her. When that fails, she sends him to a women's retreat (intended to serve as sensitivity training for him, even if it wasn't originally intended as such), which works a little bit too well.
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: During their fight, Lois and Gloria fall into a swimming pool together, becoming soaked and exciting Peter even more.
• Shout-Out:
  • During the catfight between Lois and Gloria, a baker came out of the kitchen carrying ten banana cream pies and singing, "Ten banana cream pies!", before being knocked out. This is a reference to the old "falling baker" films from the early episodes of Sesame Street.
  • Peter mentions that he has an ancestor named Huck Griffin.
  • The Million Man March was a 1995 protest march on Washington, focusing on respect for and brotherhood of male African-Americans.
  • Peter mentions that Gloria Ironbachs and Camille Paglia will both “whip it out” and see who is bigger. Camille Paglia is a Freudian literary critic noted for slamming modern-day feminism.
  • The title of the episode is from the chorus of pop singer Helen Reddy's 1972 song "I Am Woman".
  • The monsters shown on the island in the timeshare are from the book Where the Wild Things Are.
  • In the bus, Peter says to the women "I'll be Charlie, and you can all be my angels." This is a reference to the film and television series Charlie's Angels. Peter then points at a fat woman and tells her "Except for you. You can be Bosley," referring to Charlie's male assistant.
  • The pain of childbirth being "taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head," is very similar to Bill Cosby's standup routine about his first child and what he and his wife went through in the delivery room.
  • The cutaway gag where Peter is in the net surrounded by apes parodies a scene from the 1968 version of Planet of the Apes.
• Sophisticated as Hell: The man in the video says "And remember, nothing says good job like a firm, open-palmed slap on the behind."
• Straw Feminist: The vehicle for this episode's lesson is Peter being practically brainwashed to act like a woman by a woman who is utterly patronizing to other women who choose to be wives and mothers for themselves.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  Timeshare salesman: Each residence has 200 feet of pristine oceanfront. No city noise, no flesh-eating ogres, no pollution.
  (all said while he flips rapidly through slides showing scenes of bloody carnage and ferocious monsters tearing people apart)
• Take That!: Peter gives a big one at the Million Man March. Though he meant to for it to be a rant against them for being men, not because they were also black.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Peter makes the mistake of honking Gloria's boob, causing her to get angry and sentence him to a week at a women's retreat for sensitivity training.
• Too Dumb to Live: Though he intended to aim his rant at men in general, Peter (a white man) decides to tell everyone at the Million Man March (who are all African-American) that they’re responsible for the violence and lack of morals in society. Sufficed to say, they don’t take it well.

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