We had a wind storm while “Family Guy” was airing, which throws a bit of a wrench into the whole DirecTV system. I wouldn’t be so annoyed by this if we hadn’t been forced to pay a $50 installation fee to a company that was not DirecTV, but had already installed a dish in our building that was supposed to be extra-special-weatherproofed for upstate New York’s unique needs. They lied.

Anyway, it’s hard for me to assess the overall quality of the episode because it kept skipping. (Comically, the commercials all came through loud and clear.) But I will say this: it had a pretty good premise, and the B-plot revolving around Brian and Frank Sinatra Jr. is not nearly as annoying as you might anticipate.

Apparently, Peter still works in that office job. When he accidentally stumbles into the “executive bathroom” and finds it situated on a secret island, he becomes determined to get a promotion. All goes fairly well, until he accidentally blows up a children’s hospital. Oops. But when the company finds out that Peter never passed the third grade, they insist that he return to school.

Peter, surprisingly, doesn’t get along too well with his teacher - but she offers him a Hail Mary pass in the form of a spelling bee. If he wins, he graduates. Otherwise, he’s out. Peter wins after correctly spelling “lesbians” and returns to work to claim his promotion, only to find out that he’s being put on trial for blowing up that hospital. Oops! Consequences! That’s wacky, because usually there are no consequences on this show!

The B-plot is basically an excuse for Seth MacFarlane to point out that the ’50s were better than our current club scene. Brian and Frank Sinatra, Jr., who are still singing together at that anachronistic dinner club, decide to buy it and revamp it to keep it from going out of business. Stewie helps out, but his version of “help” is to turn it into a modern dance club. It’s pretty successful until Andy Dick shows up, upon which everyone scatters and Brian and Frank sing a song about how everything modern sucks. YOU KIDS GET OFF SETH MACFARLANE’S LAWN!

It’s hard to separate my unpleasant DirecTV viewing experience from the actual episode, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t like it very much. It’s even more scattershot than usual and something’s just…missing. Humor, maybe.

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