Family Guy: Road to the North Pole, on FOX
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This aired in 2010. It's the seventh episode of the ninth season of Family Guy, as well as being the sixth of the show's Road to... episodes. It's the first one of the "Road to" episodes to be an hour long (44 minutes without commercials) instead of the show's usual half hour runtime. It's also the show's second Christmas episode (there would later be others, but this is the only one I feel the need to give its own entry).

Um... I watched the show at the time, and I'm sure I liked it, but I didn't get around to writing a review. Years passed, and I thought, "Hey, I should write a review." So I set up this page. And years after that, in 2023, I finally re-watched the special. I probably would have rated it higher the first time I watched it, but as is pretty much always the case with "Family Guy", there's a pretty fair amount of crudeness, and it's distasteful in any number of ways. Still, it was somewhat amusing (even if I didn't like all of the humor), and it was a reasonably entertaining story.

The episode is hosted (in live-action) by series creator Seth MacFarlane's father, Ron. But of course the majority of the episode is animated, as usual. Brian takes Stewie to the mall to meet Santa Claus, but after they stood in line for hours, Santa decides to quit for the day instead of listening to Stewie. So Stewie asks Brian to take him to the North Pole... to kill Santa for blowing him off. Brian doesn't believe in Santa Claus, but Stewie is sure he's real, and it turns out he's right. But what they find at the North Pole is far from what they expected. I won't spoil anything about that, but Brian and Stewie must take it upon themselves to try to deliver presents in Santa's stead. Unfortunately, things go very much awry. That's pretty much all I want to say about the plot, except that there is a happy ending, one year later.

Well, the special had a couple of songs, so I guess it counts as a musical, though just barely. And I would say that it was at least slightly better than the show usually is. Maybe more than slightly, but it's hard for me to judge, because I feel it's hampered by the usual crudeness and all. Still, I'm glad I finally saw it again. And if you're a bigger fan of "Family Guy" than I am, you should definitely like this episode a lot.