Lois Griffin

Family Guy character
File:LoisG.gif
Lois Griffin
Hometown:	Newport, Rhode Island
Species:	Human
Gender:	Female
Height:	5 ft 7.25 in (1.71 m)
Weight:	130 lbs
Age:	40 (as of the third season)
Religion:	Protestant
Heritage:	partially German
Favorite Bands:	KISS and Whitesnake
First Episode Appearance:	"Death Has a Shadow"
Voice Actor:	Alex Borstein

Lois Griffin (née Pewterschmidt) is a cartoon character on the TV show Family Guy by Seth MacFarlane. She is the wife of Peter Griffin, and the mother of Meg, Chris, and Stewie. Lois is voiced by Alex Borstein.

Life

Born into the wealthy Pewterschmidt family around 1968, Lois met Peter while he was a towel boy at the family country club. Lois fell in love with him because she found his lower-class, easy-going silliness more appealing than the stuffy, uptight suitors in her circle. Lois was crowned Miss Teen Rhode Island and wanted to pursue a modeling career, but her father thought that was beneath the dignity of the family.

A strange backstory (probably intended as a joke) for Lois is shown in the episode "Lethal Weapons". A flashback shows her as a circus show freak chanting "Me likey bouncey!" pictured as a "cavegirl" in a purple leopard-skin toga-style garment on a trampoline. There was no attempt to mesh that backstory with the wealthy Pewterschmidt backstory, nor was it ever mentioned in any subsequent episode.

In "The Story on Page One", Lois reveals that she attended college at Kent State. "This one time, the National Guard came and shot some of my friends," she said, apparently referring to the Kent State shootings. However, this is a discrepancy, because if she was 40 in 1999 when the series started, she would have been 12 when the shootings happened.

Before meeting Peter, Lois had relationships with other men: J. Geils, the "pyro guy" from the band Whitesnake and Chaim Witz (aka Gene Simmons of KISS), a fact of which Peter was very proud when he learned of it in the episode "Road to Europe". Lois was also known as "Loose Lois". She has also been romantically linked to singing duo Hall & Oates. She has an extensive collection of real life plaster molds of male genitalia from her liaisons. She also had an apparent relationship with an unseen man named Stan Thompson, who is allegedly Meg's real father. Though, since this is never visited upon in any other episodes, it may have just been part of a gag. In the direct-to-DVD Family Guy movie she hints that she may be bisexual by saying "Women are such teases, that's why I went back to men." (The episode "Brian Sings and Swings," in which Lois shows Meg how to kiss a girl, would be consistent with this interpretation).

Lois was raised Protestant, for which Peter's staunch Catholic father, Francis, despises her; on their wedding day, Francis spray-painted "To a Protestant Whore" underneath the "Just Married" sign on the back of their car. She and Peter raise their children in the Church, but Francis still hates her.

As she gave up her inheritance for Peter, Lois, not surprisingly, has a testy relationship with her father, a man whom can be best described as an intolerant bigot. It can be reasoned that her pre-marital promiscuity and marriage was her way of rebelling against or humiliating him. However, the fact she calls him "Daddy" and dotes on him whenever she visits him suggests that she still seeks his approval.

Lois teaches piano to supplement the family's income, though spends most of her time caring for her family. Chris was unusually heavy at birth (a newspaper clipping on the refrigerator has a picture of Lois in a hospital bed looking extremely haggard and holding Chris; the caption reads "Elephant Child Born to Local Woman"), while her youngest son Stewie is intent on matricide, though she is oblivious to this. In "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington", she finally realizes that Stewie is a killer and regrets ignoring the warning signs. This was, however, only a dream, which culminated in Stewie opening up a hole in the floor through which Lois fell, after which she woke up and forgot all about it.

After Peter had been lost at sea for a few months and presumed dead, Lois and Brian wed in a sexless marriage of convenience. When Peter was finally rescued, Lois was torn between her affection for Peter and her commitment to Brian. Brian understood and divorced Lois, but what annoyed Brian was that right after they divorced, Lois said "and I was just about to push the beds together and have sex with you, Brian."

Lois has a sister who has had several husbands, of which all have left her, and had a baby boy by her last husband. She also has a brother, Patrick, who was unknown to Lois until the fourth season episode "The Fat Guy Strangler". He was placed in an asylum due to walking in on his mother and Jackie Gleason having oral sex which caused him to become a serial killer of fat men. He is forced to relive this traumatic event when Peter imitates Gleason's character in The Honeymooners, Ralph Kramden, repeating the line "Pow! Right in the kisser!" several times.

At some point between the first episode and the possible future shown in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, Lois opened a bank account she kept secret from Peter.

Personality

There is a curious duality to Lois' personality. She can be vacuous at times, and seems to come across as what many modern Americans would (perhaps erroneously) term a "typical mother". However, this is in strong contrast to her other role in the series as a firebrand, and a strong woman who is exceedingly capable. This duality is best expressed in the character's own words: "I'm like one of those bald eagles you see at the zoo. Beautiful to look at, but mess with one of my chicks and I'll use my razor sharp talons to claw your fuckin' eyes out! Cookies are ready!" (The actual swear word in that sentence was obscured by the oven buzzing to indicate the cookies were done). In "A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas", she has a nervous breakdown when just about everything goes wrong, throws a destructive tantrum, and is subdued with a tranquilizer.

Lois has some unexpected talents. She can calculate the street value of confiscated drugs with ease ("The Thin White Line"), and is a skilled lounge singer.

Lois' morals can seem questionable at times. In addition to being a long-time counterfeiter (making 10-dollar bills), she also went through a brief period of kleptomania ("Breaking Out Is Hard to Do"). More on her questionable morality can be seen in her Wikiquote entry.

When Lois appeared on Diane Simmons' talk show, an onscreen title described her as "Probably more of a bitch than she lets on." (To which Lois responds, "Oh, go fuck yourself, Diane.")

Lois engages in the lengthiest actual conversations with her daughter Meg, giving advice and so forth. It may be deduced, however, that she does not care as much about Meg as she seems to. Support for this claim comes in the episode "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do", when a Griffin family friend, paraplegic police officer Joe Swanson, starts to slip and fall into the sewers. Lois grabs him but slowly loses grip. Joe yells at her to pretend that he is one of her children, but when he continues to slip, Joe screams, "Not MEG!", and Lois pulls Joe to safety.

Part of this seeming hatred may result from resentment over the inconvenience of Meg's birth; in the direct-to-DVD Family Guy movie, Lois reveals that her pregnancy with Meg prevented her from participating in the Olympics.

Besides her quirkiness and hidden talents, Lois has a strong sexual side as well. One instance finds her in a dominatrix outfit, while another episode has her reaching an emotional climax by yelling at Peter to slap her panty-clad backside! Later, she role-plays the bad school girl, asking Peter for a spanking. Lois can be cuddly, too, and aggressive as well. She’s playful and willing to take the lead if she feels like it.

Lois has even exhibited signs of being a lesbian, or at the very least a bi-sexual. First evidence of this came in the Season 2 episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", where Lois intrudes on Meg's slumber party and says that she and her friends used to practice French kissing, at which point she asks everyone there to pair up. In the Family Guy Movie during one of Peter's "Grinds My Gears" segments he says "We all know that no woman anywhere wants to have sex with anyone." to which Lois responds with "Women are such teases. That's why I went back to men." In addition during the Season 4 episode "Brian Sings and Swings" Lois passionately kisses a young, teenage (lesbian) friend of Meg's.

Health

In Season 4, it was revealed that what Lois didn't realize was that she had acquired a tumor in her brain while repressing the feelings and thoughts of what kind of man she married, especially one with mental retardation. She puts up with his childish stupidity and hides how she truly feels about him, but at a hidden price. Along with other jokes and subtle implications, this suggests that Lois is not happy with her marriage. It is in fact possible that her character is a parody of "spoiled rich girls" who give it all up to be with the men they love only to find that it isn't all it's cracked up to be (specifically in regards to the film Dirty Dancing). Regardless of what regrets she may have concerning her marriage, the fact that she remains married to Peter implies that she gets something out of it.

When Peter went blind from nickel poisoning, Lois stops wearing makeup until Peter gets his sight back. Without makeup, her skin is an unhealthy-looking pale color.

After being doused with hot French fry oil, Lois spent at least several days in the hospital bandaged from head to toe (in the episode "Petarded.") When she was released, she exhibited no visible scarring, but said she would smell like French fries for 6 months.

When Lois first tried to wean Stewie off breast milk, her breasts swell in size and after a few days, she decided to resume breastfeeding him (season 4b, "I Take Thee Quagmire").

In the episode, "Sibling Rivalry" Lois channels her sexual frustration into eating and after she becomes fat, Peter's interest is renewed and things heat back up in the bedroom until her unhealthy eating habits get the best of her. She suffers a heart attack, and during the surgery the doctor removes the fat which returns her to normal.

Trivia

• In the original pilot pitch for FOX, Lois was blonde rather than redheaded. This character design was revisited in the character of Francine Smith from American Dad!, who shares many of the same character traits as Lois, and who also had a rather wild teenage/young adult life.
• The third season episode "Lethal Weapons" suggests that Lois is going to explode when she turns 50 because when Stewie was in her uterus he planted a bomb. Stewie said "my first act of violence was that ticking time-bomb I left in your uterus. Happy 50th birthday Lois!" (Dialogue from other episodes seems to indicate Lois is 40 years old as of Season 3).
  • This is contradicted in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story when you see everybody thirty years in the future, Lois (who would presumably be at least 70) is still alive. It could have just been that the bomb never went off, or perhaps the future Stewie had somehow disabled or removed the bomb at some point, since he had apparently abandoned his goal of murdering Lois. Another theory is that Stewie was simply referring to menopause. It is also very possible that this was simply a joke and did not mean anything at all.
• In the 2nd season episode "Fifteen Minutes Of Shame", she was replaced by actress Fran Drescher when they refused to let Meg be replaced.
• Lois makes a cameo appearance in the Drawn Together episode "The Lemon-AIDS Walk". She and Peter pass by a down-and-out Wooldoor Sockbat, who is holding a lemonade cup which Peter tosses change into. Lois admonishes Peter not to give him money, claiming "he's just going to use it to buy lemonade". Lois's voice was provided by her regular voice actor Alex Borstein (Peter did not speak).