Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy doesn’t shy away from the hot-button headlines and last night’s episode was no exception. The animated series took a swipe at Hollywood’s sexual misconduct headlines with a pointed Kevin Spacey reference.
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In the episode “Crimes and Meg’s Demeanor,” Meg starts drinking as a way to increase her popularity during her senior year of high school. At a party, she drinks several beers, casually throwing the empties over her shoulder, telling her peers “what can I say, I’m full of surprises like the end of The Usual Suspects.” The show then moves to Meg watching the end of The Usual Suspects with her parents where her father, Peter, declares the “truth” about Spacey’s Kaizer Soze.
“Wait, he was gay the whole time?” Peter says.
The joke refers to Spacey’s response to Anthony Rapp’s allegation that Spacey made sexual advance to him when he was only 14-years-old back in 1986. Spacey received a lot of backlash for his response in which the actor publicly came out as gay, something his critics noted was unrelated to accusations he was responding to. And that’s what the Family Guy joke seems to be saying: being gay had nothing to do with the accusation just as it had nothing to do with the twist at the end of The Usual Suspects.
Sunday night’s joke isn’t the first time that Family Guy has called out Spacey over the years. Shortly after news of Rapp’s allegations broke, a clip from the show’s fourth season in 2005 resurfaced. In the scene, baby Stewie is seen running naked through a shopping mall while crying out “Help! I’ve escaped from Kevin Spacey’s basement!”
The Spacey jokes are also not the only time MacFarlane himself has made veiled references about sexual abuse in Hollywood. At the Oscars this year, MacFarlane made jokes about Harvey Weinstein, joking that the five Best Supporting Actress nominees “no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” Weinstein notably was fired from his production company following accusations of sexual misconduct in October.
As for Spacey, he, too, has faced professional consequences following Rapp’s allegations. The actor was suspended from his hit Netflix series House of Cards. The streaming service also cut ties with Spacey entirely, shelving his biopic about writer Gore Vidal, Gore, as well.
[ H/T: Mashable ]
