‘Family Guy’ Cracked a Timely Kevin Spacey Joke Last Night

In the wake of the revelations that Kevin Spacey committed several (that we have heard of) acts of sexual misconduct with young men over the years, one narrative that emerged was that rumors had been swirling around Hollywood for years about him. Rumors, being rumors, weren’t keen on specifics, so whether what was an “open secret” about Spacey was his homosexuality, his proclivity for younger (though perhaps not illegally so) men, or his actual stories about misconduct and harassment with minors, is all kind of hazy.

At the time of the revelations, Family Guy was one of the TV shows (along with Difficult People) that got credit for having referenced Spacey’s open secrets right there on national television. And on last night’s episode, Seth Macfarlane’s show was once again on the Spacey beat.

The scene came in one of those typical Family Guy cutaways (“this is just like the time I saw [X movie] in [Y circumstance]!”). In this case, Meg Griffin compared being full of surprises to The Usual Suspects, the twisty 1995 movie that won Spacey his first Oscar. In the cutaway, Meg’s dad Peter gleans entirely the wrong message from the movie’s big twist: “You mean he was gay the whole time?!”

Besides being a textbook bit of comedy misdirection (I was expecting him to notice that Spacey was Keyser Soze not GAY!), the Family Guy gag was also a jab into the ribs of the misdirection Spacey pulled when he released a statement coming out as gay on the same night Buzzfeed published the first misconduct story. Spacey being gay wasn’t the story then, and it wasn’t the story in the fictionalized Family Guy universe either.

Stream Family Guy's "Crimes and Meg's Demeanor" on Hulu.