A Hero Sits Next Door encyclopedia topics

Plot summary

Mr. Weed introduces Guillermo, a ringer he hired to ensure the company’s victory, at the annual softball game. Peter injures Guillermo with a wild pitch during practice and must find a new player to replace him. Meanwhile, Lois is trying to become friends with the new neighbors. After Stewie tries to escape from listening to Lois and Bonnie's conversation, he says "Oh to be the Lindbergh baby right about now", a reference to the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son. Peter is antagonistic to his new neighbor, Joe Swanson, until he discovers that Joe played baseball in college. Peter invites Joe to join the team. When Joe shows up on the field, however, Peter (along with the other players) is horrified to see that he is wheelchair-bound, and yells, "Holy crip, he’s a crapple!" Joe turns out to be a fantastic player, however, and leads the team to victory. In addition, he is also a heroic policeman, and soon becomes very popular with the neighbors, including Peter's family. When Peter is mad at Joe for taking all his friends he quotes the Gershwin & Gershwin song "They Can’t Take That Away from Me" by saying "The way I wear my hat? No, no, he can't take that away from me." Stewie, meanwhile, believes that Joe is some kind of cyborg, and tries to steal his wheelchair.

Joe's popularity makes Peter jealous, and Peter wants to be a hero too. He decides to perform a heroic deed to compete with Joe and attempts to stop a bank robbery in progress. However, he and Brian are taken hostage until Joe convinces the robbers to surrender. After the hostage situation Peter is disappointed, but his family tells him that he is their hero.

In another subplot, Meg keeps trying to get Kevin's attention, but is unsuccessful until she gets Kevin to start talking about himself.

Production

This is the first episode not to have a word relating to death in the title. The writing staff has remarked that they initially planned to give each episode a bizarrely macabre title, but dropped the approach after the first four episodes because they were getting the episodes mixed up.

Cultural references

When the bank robbers take the gun back from Peter, the one with the red mask on has a prosthetic arm.
Peter tells Joe he has "that disease where stuff just pops out of your mouth", referring to Coprolalia, a type of Tourette syndrome.
When Joe recounts (in flashback) being paralyzed as a result of a rooftop battle, he is battling the Grinch from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Peter makes a reference to one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park: he tells the guys at work that he developed a transformer doll that turns Facts of Life character Natalie into the spitting lizard from Jurassic park.
In a flashback to one of Peter's past jobs (as a Calvin Klein model) he is wondering who the bad guy was from Tron.
During the robbery, the start of the early 1980s title sequence of Dr. Who is shown.

Censorship

In Syndication:

Peter's supposed coprolalic utterings of "Son of a bitch" have been reduced to one.
The part where one softball player gives another player trick gum that makes him addicted to heroin was cut.
Although earlier, otherwise uncut airings (such as those shown on some Adult Swim reruns and FOX reruns) edit out the part where a child's JFK PEZ dispenser gets blasted by a stray bullet, syndication leaves the scene uncut.
When Brian says "Gosh, I'd like to help you Peter. But I've gotta go out in the hall and chew on the back of my ass for about 5 minutes." One version has "ass" replaced with "leg."

Trivia

Joe Swanson is introduced in this episode.
It is implied that Mr. Weed is having a romantic relationship with Guillermo. When hiring Guillermo, Mr. Weed is wearing X-ray glasses to look beyond his clothes, when Guillermo is hurt, Mr. Weed states that he's allergic to penicillin and white zinfandel, and when driving home with Brian, Peter says he was in the locker room and swore Guillermo was "bench pressing Mr. Weed".

References

Callaghan, Steve. “A Hero Sits Next Door.” Family Guy: The Official Episode Guide Seasons 1–3. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. 30–33.
Delarte, Alonso. “Nitpicking Family Guy: Season 1.” Bob’s Poetry Magazine March 2005: 12–13. http://bobspoetry.com/Bobs02Mr.pdf