Family Guy Finally Recognizes Its Secretly Best Character

Family Guy is now working its way through Season 23 of the long running animated series, and with the new season is finally showing some recognition to one of the series’ secretly best characters. Family Guy’s extended cast is stacked with a ton of jokes as many of the citizens introduced through Quahog, Rhode Island are usually just one-off jokes that recur every time they appear on screen. But over the years, some of these characters have been shaped in different ways to show off sides of their personality that make them quite hilarious when compared to Peter Griffin and the others.

The biggest example of this is Joe Swanson. Originally introduced as Peter’s neighborhood rival in Family Guy’s earliest seasons, Joe has since become a core part of Peter’s friend group. He’s usually the butt of the joke, but his positivity in the face of so much of that despair makes him all the more appealing. It’s something that has been popping up more and more in the later years, and goes even further with one of the latest episodes having Stewie recognize how big of an influence Joe really is.

Family Guy Finally Shows Love to Joe

In Family Guy Season 23 Episode 16 “Row v. Wade,” Stewie and Brian make it into the audience of The Price is Right and Stewie takes a selfie. He asks Brian about what the caption should be and one of the suggestions is “Scorching it.” Hilariously, Stewie has never said this before, and Brian takes it a step further and reveals that Stewie actually took the phrase from Joe (who has also never been heard saying it in the animated series before). Stewie tries to contest it by explaining how silly it would be for him to sit around and copy Joe, only for Brian to reveal that Stewie also says “Rip it up” because of Joe.

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It’s here that Stewie realizes that he did get “Rip it up” from Joe, and then recognizes that Joe might have a much bigger influence on him than he realized, “Is he a gigantic influence on me? Do I love Joe?” The joke being that although Joe has never said these things, he would have been saying them so much that it’s even rubbed off on Stewie as a result. But this also falls in line with the way Family Guy has hilariously used Joe in the last few years especially.

Family Guy Changes How It Sees Joe

Although Joe is used as the butt of many of Family Guy’s saddest jokes, with some even appearing in the next episode of the season, Joe himself has been on a positive streak with the series. Because while he’s often ridiculed by his friends, or seems intentionally corny, it’s these aspects of Joe that have come back around to be a great mine for jokes. Family Guy has even gone as far as including Joe in things just because it would be funny, like in the reboot episode where he says the audience “wanted more Joe.”

This is a small moment between Stewie and Brian in the grand scheme of the season, but it’s Family Guy also recognizing how much of a utility character Joe has become over the years. Joe clips have gone viral (his Fiona Apple tribute, his singing answering machine message), so it’s about time that Joe is getting some proper attention as to how much he actually influences the series now. We want more Joe.