The Splendid Source
Directed by Brian Iles and written by Mark Hentemann, the episode originally aired on Fox in the United States on May 16, 2010.
The episode follows Peter, Joe and Quagmire as they set out on a journey to find the ultimate source of all the world's dirty jokes.
The plot is based on a short story of the same name written by Richard Matheson and first published in the May 1956 edition of Playboy magazine.
Locating Bruce at his job at the bowling alley, the group discovers that the joke has been transmitted by a large chain of people including Consuela, Dr. Hartman, Mayor Adam West, Angela, Opie, Herbert, Tom Tucker, Bender from Futurama, Al Harrington, and REO Speedwagon frontman Kevin Cronin who has also been tracing the source of the joke and saved them some stops with one of their previous stops involving a Virginia bartender.
The Dean of the Secret Order of Dirty Joke Writers appears from the shadows and leads the group into a large library, where the world's greatest geniuses study.
As they fly over the secret enclave, it is destroyed in a fireball resulting from a burning drapery that Peter had set alight with a candle.
Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire then fly off into the sunset, after finding out the supposed greatest joke ever written is "Guess what?
In the final scene, Peter introduces footage of an ape scratching himself instead of a public service announcement from the March of Dimes Foundation.
[4] The episode saw the fourth re-appearance, the first being an equally brief appearance in "Spies Reminiscent of Us", the second in "Road to the Multiverse" and the third being "Go Stewie Go", by former main cast member Mike Henry as the voice of Cleveland Brown.
The actor had previously left the role on Family Guy, in order to star as the character in his own spinoff, entitled The Cleveland Show.
[5] This episode is also the first crossover with The Cleveland Show, which was created by Family Guy creator and executive producer Seth MacFarlane, voice actor Mike Henry, and former animated comedy writer Richard Appel.
[6] "The Splendid Source", along with the eleven other episodes from Family Guy's eighth season, was released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on December 13, 2011.
The sets include brief audio commentaries by various crew and cast members for several episodes, a collection of deleted scenes and animatics, a special mini-feature which discussed the process behind animating "And Then There Were Fewer", a mini-feature entitled "The Comical Adventures of Family Guy – Brian & Stewie: The Lost Phone Call", and footage of the Family Guy panel at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con.
[9] With the plane, they land on an island which has the source for every dirty joke ever made, the base looks similar to a temple-compound from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now.
[9] The base is inhabited with many great minds including Warren Buffett (who was in a deleted scene on the DVD), Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking where they pass their time writing the world's dirty jokes.
During the scene, the Vietnamese man uses very incendiary language, describing the memorial as a "scoreboard" whilst performing a "loser" sign, and stating "Hey, I know that guy – I kill him!
"[12] Ramsey Isler of IGN reiterated his own enjoyment of the premise of the episode, but went on to state, "While I can appreciate the point that good comedy does take a certain degree of wit and cleverness, this just wasn't a very satisfying end to an idea that had so much potential.
