Cover Art For 'Family Guy' Banned For TV Episode

[Brian Damage]

NEW YORK (AP) — "Family Guy" forbidden fruit will soon be available for plucking — at least, for fans prepared to pay for a peek.

"Partial Terms of Endearment," a never-seen episode of the racy animated series, will be available for sale on DVD for $14.98 from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment on Sept. 28. (Fox said it had not yet finalized plans for digital download.) That's more than a year after the Fox network deemed it outrageous even by "Family Guy" standards and pulled it from last season's slate of episodes.

Since then, the episode has gained a sort of "banned-in-Boston" notoriety. Further upping the ante is its subject matter. Bumbling, moronic Peter Griffin and his patient but libertine wife, Lois, throw themselves into the abortion debate.

The episode's narrative has never been a secret. In fact, it was performed live last summer by the cast (including Seth MacFarlane, the series' creator, who serves as executive producer, writer and the voice of numerous characters) for members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences as well as members of the press.

Still, here's a spoiler alert for those who don't want to know what happens.

Most of the episode dwells on Lois (voiced by Alex Borstein) agreeing to become a surrogate mother for a friend who can't have a child. But after her friend and her husband are killed in a car crash, the Griffins are left with the difficult decision of whether to proceed with the pregnancy or not.

What, in other hands, could have been a serious, even heart-wrenching story is on "Family Guy" a devilish burlesque — not to mention a wickedly astute examination of the current abortion clash.

It's not as if the episode trivializes the debate. Oh, it's a big decision, Peter readily acknowledges. "But life is FULL of big decisions — like deciding whether or not to have Indian food."

To see the episode in all its cartoon glory is to conclude three things:

—It's wickedly funny, no matter how offensive.

—It was never (at least, not in this lifetime) ever going to make it to the air of any commercial TV broadcaster. (Hmmmm. Was shooting it, then "censoring" it always a marketing ploy to super-charge direct-to-video sales?)

—And, finally, it's recommended only for the "Family Guy" faithful. The uninitiated, the faint-of-heart and, most of all, the anti-abortion crowd should maybe choose to take a pass.

At one point, Peter (voiced by MacFarlane) watches an anti-abortion video, whose speaker declares, "Science has proven that within hours of conception, a human fetus has started a college fund and has already made your first Mother's Day card out of macaroni and glitter."

That video argues that several key people would be alive if abortion weren't legal, including a fourth Stooge, a guy who would have killed Adolf Hitler, and Osama bin Laden's America-loving brother, who could have prevented 9/11.

Presented with this argument, the ever-waffling Peter instantly decides against Lois getting an abortion.

But earlier, he is insistent that her pregnancy be terminated.

In one attempt to induce a miscarriage, Peter pleasantly tells Lois, "I've hired some 1980s black break-dancers to do their routine on your stomach."

Then, in a homage to "Road Runner" cartoons, Peter buys an Acme Miscarriage Kit, which, of course, malfunctions, resulting in him (as the Wile E. Coyote stand-in) taking an interminable plunge into a canyon.

Nonetheless, by the end of the episode, Peter and Lois have agreed on what to do.

"I think we made the right decision," she says brightly as they sit at their kitchen table, summing things up in the episode's last moments. "One more person to share the world with, another little voice in the back seat of the car."

Any "Family Guy" fan can see where this is headed.

[MrCleveland]

The ending sounded like the ending of "Maude" where Maude gets an abortion.