Family Guy's depiction of President Donald Trump. Photo / Twitter
No one inside the Trump White House was safe on Sunday's "Family Guy."
The episode, titled "Trump Guy," targeted everyone in the president's orbit, from his daughter Tiffany Trump to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and laid on punchlines about the president's hair, his makeup and his hand size.
The much-loved series' take-down of the President was applauded by fans on social media with one calling it the "funniest episode of all time".
However, not everyone appreciated it, with right-wing viewers insisting it was "pathetic" and a "terrible" installment of "one of the worst shows ever invented."
For all the laughs and poking fun, there was one serious subject that the Fox cartoon's showrunners particularly wanted to address: Assault.
Meg, the sullen teenager of the Griffin clan, is groped in the episode by President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval Office.
"The only point in using Meg was to show that men like Trump can attempt to prey on vulnerable people," Rich Appel explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "It's clearly offensive and gross and not appropriate."
The episode's "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington"-style plot is pretty straightforward. Peter, the family's patriarch, is hired as Trump's press secretary and the whole gang relocates to the swamp. After being confused repeatedly for Chris Christie at a "fancy dinner" in the White House, Meg runs into Ivanka Trump. Ivanka gives the teenager a makeover before introducing her to the president, who the first daughter describes as "kinda like my boyfriend."
During the Oval Office meeting, Meg excitedly goes on and on about how great it is to meet the commander in chief. While she prattles away, we see cartoon Trump reach below the viewers' line of sight to grab Meg inappropriately. The showrunners specifically didn't want to show the actual touching.
"We wanted to touch on this aspect of Trump's public face, without putting Meg in too compromised a position," said Appel of his animated star. The focus of the episode, he added, was not the assault itself but the reaction to it: Meg's parents, Lois and Peter, don't believe her story.
"You're still going to work for that man after he assaulted me?" Meg asks Peter as he heads out the door and back to 1600 Penn to report for duty.
Eventually the truth comes out and the rest of the episode is an extended fight scene between Peter and Trump as the two men battle it out all over Washington's monuments and museums. It takes a random cameo from "hunky" Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end the cartoon bloodshed.
Peter, a constant source of put-downs on the show, is eventually called a hypocrite by Trump for condemning the president's bad behavior.
"We're a cartoon," Peter counters. "You could turn us off. You're the president. We can't turn you off and you're on like all the time."
For his part, Appel said he hoped that if Trump watches the episode he become a "Family Guy" fan.
"So, you know, I can dream," he said.
The Oscar nominee claims the director had 'changed' and become 'quite impatient' on set.