The ‘Family Guy’ Episode That Wasn’t Released for Four Years

The Big Picture

• Family Guy has faced controversies for pushing boundaries with its episodes.
• The episode “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” was accused of being antisemitic, which led to it being pulled for four years before finally airing in 2004.
• The show was also sued by the publisher of “When You Wish Upon a Star” for a song parody in the episode, but FOX and Family Guy ultimately won the lawsuit in 2009.

Debuting on FOX on January 31, 1999, Seth MacFarlane‘s Family Guy was initially seen by many as nothing more than a crude clone of The Simpsons. If you thought Matt Groening‘s series was controversial a decade before, Family Guy became popular by pushing the envelope, whether by taking a cringeworthy but hilarious look at real life events, or for a long while having baby Stewie constantly trying to kill his mother.

As The Simpsons began to regress creatively, Family Guy‘s the Griffins became the new top animated American family. It seemed like they could get away with anything; then came the third season episode “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein.” Suddenly, with accusations of antisemitism and a lawsuit from the publishers of the song “When You Wish Upon a Star,” FOX and Family Guy found themselves in trouble, leading to the episode being pulled for years.

A History of ‘Family Guy’s Most Controversial Episodes

Family Guy thrives on controversy. Some of it wasn’t so bad, really, such as when fans lost their minds during a Season 12 arc that saw the family dog, and Stewie’s best friend, Brian, hit and killed by a car. Many viewers actually thought the popular character had been killed off when it was nothing more than a storyline involving Stewie’s eventual use of time travel to get his friend back.

Many Family Guy episodes, however, intentionally tried to push buttons through satire. The Season 8 episode “Quagmire’s Dad” drew flack for being seen as mocking trans people when Quagmire’s father is revealed as a trans woman. Season 5’s “Turban Cowboy” included many insensitive Muslim jokes, “The Simpsons Guy” in Season 13 had Stewie making a joke about sexual assault, and let’s not forget that one of Family’s Guy‘s supporting characters, Herbert, is used for comedic relief for being a pedophile. One episode of Family Guy was even banned. In Season 8, “Partial Terms of Endearment” took a satirical look at abortion. It has never aired and can only be found on the series’ DVD collection for the season.

‘Family Guy’s “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” Was Called Antisemitic

Next to “Partial Terms of Endearment,” the most problematic Family Guy episode was 2000’s “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein.” No, it’s not about Harvey Weinstein, which would have been bad enough, but is instead about Peter Griffin going to a Jewish lawyer named Max Weinstein (Ben Stein) for financial advice because Peter believes in the antisemitic stereotype that Jews are better with money than others. While Seth McFarlane was going for satire, playing into the trope to show how stupid it is for people to believe such things, the message wasn’t received as intended.

In the episode, Peter is down in the dumps, because he’s just lost the family’s money after falling for a scam (who knew there was no such thing as volcano insurance!). His friends, Quagmire and Cleveland, tell Peter they’ve had better success with money by hiring lawyers with Jewish names. So, when a man named Max Weinstein has his car break down outside the Griffin home, it’s the perfect sign to Peter that his Jewish hero has arrived. Of course, it’s ridiculous to see Peter chasing the poor guy down and begging for his help, but the plan works, with Max Weinstein able to get Peter’s money back. This convinces Peter even more about how magical Jews are, to the point that he decides his son, Chris, needs to convert to Judaism to get better grades in school.

While it’s hilarious to see how stupid Peter is (he’s not antisemitic, he just doesn’t know any better), for an audience that does know better, not everyone got the joke. It led to a scared FOX pulling the episode before it even aired. In fact, FOX wouldn’t air it for four long years, until 2004. MacFarlane once joked about the controversy, saying before an airing on Adult Swim, “The episode that FOX refused to air because they felt it was too risky. In this case, too risky means anything that doesn’t feature Paris Hilton half-naked on the hood of the car.” He added that the episode was “centered around Peter Griffin’s misconceptions of the Jewish community.”

‘Family Guy’ Was Sued by the Publisher of “When You Wish Upon a Star”

It wasn’t just the plot of “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” that FOX had to eventually worry about. There also came bigger trouble in the form of a lawsuit. During the episode, Peter, wanting so much to find a Jew to help him get his money back, goes into a long musical number, singing “I Need a Jew,” a parody of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the famous song from 1940’s Pinocchio. In 2007, three years after the episode finally aired on television, Bourne Music Publishers, who owned the rights to “When You Wish Upon a Star,” filed a lawsuit against FOX, and Family Guy‘s producers and creators, including Seth MacFarlane as a defendant as well, and claimed that “I Need a Jew” was nothing more than a “thinly veiled copy” of the Pinocchio song. Bourne attorney Paul Fakler said, “If you listen to the structure of the lyrics, the song, the name of the episode and how (Peter’s) singing out the window to the stars, there’s no question they were using the song.”

Still, two years later, in March 2009, FOX and Family Guy won the lawsuit against them. U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled that the lyrics and tone of “I Need a Jew” and “When You Wish Upon a Star” were strikingly different (well, we’d hope so). The judge also said there was no issue with Family Guy imitating the song for comedic effect, since Bourne had already benefited from having the song included in “wholesome” things like Pinocchio. Judge Batts added, “It is precisely that beneficial association that opens the song up for ridicule by parodists seeking to take the wind out of such lofty, magical, or pure associations.”

The years-long ban on “When You Wish Upon a Weinstein” and the “I Need a Jew” lawsuit had no effect on Seth MacFarlane or Family Guy. If anything, the controversy only added to the appeal. Tell someone you shouldn’t watch or listen to something, and it’s only going to make it that much more desirable. Two decades later, Family Guy is still going strong, and putting out hilariously offensive content every episode.

Family Guy is available to stream on FOX.

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