Meg Griffin

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This article is about the cartoon character. For the disc jockey, see Meg Griffin (radio personality).

Meg Griffin
Family Guy character
Meg Griffin
First appearance	Death Has a Shadow
Voiced by	Lacey Chabert (1999–2000) Mila Kunis (2000 – present)
Information
Full name	Megan Griffin
Gender	Female
Occupation	High School Student
Relatives	Parents: Peter[1] and Lois Siblings: Chris and Stewie Pet: Brian Griffin

Megan "Meg" Griffin is a character from the animated television series Family Guy. She is the oldest child of Lois and Peter Griffin at 17 years old, sister of Chris and Stewie.

Personality

Meg is a self-conscious teenage girl. Her self-consciousness causes her to desperately try to be part of the cool crowd, but this only results in her getting coldly rebuffed by Connie D'Amico,^[2]an insensitive, egotistical and irresponsible cheerleader. However, another student named Neil Goldman is attracted to her.^[3] She is also usually at the bottom of the family's pecking order and the butt of Peter's jokes due to her homeliness, tendency toward social awkwardness and lack of popularity. Everyone in her family, especially Peter and Chris, makes fun of her in every possible way they can, although on several occasions the family's true love for her has been proven. She has been so self-conscious and insecure about herself that she has engaged in dangerous sexual behavior just for attention.

[edit]Voice actors

On the season 1 DVD commentary for the Drawn Together episode "Hot Tub", Cree Summerclaims she was offered the role to play Meg but was dismissed by the producers due to being of the wrong ethnicity for the character. Meg was voiced by an uncredited Lacey Chabert for the first season, and by Mila Kunis in subsequent seasons, though some of Chabert's work became second-season episodes due to production order. Kunis won the role after auditions and a slight rewrite of the character, in part due to her performance on That '70s Show.^[4] MacFarlane called Kunis back after her first audition, instructing her to speak slower, and then told her to come back another time and enunciate more. Once she claimed that she had it under control, MacFarlane hired her.^[4] MacFarlane stated that Kunis "had a very natural quality to Meg" and she's "in a lot of ways [...] almost more right for the character".^[5] Tara Strong provided Meg's singing voice in "Don't Make Me Over".^[6]

Appearance

Meg typically wears glasses and a pink beanie even underneath other headgear. She also commonly wears a pink and white shirt, blue jeans and tan or white Birkenstock clogs. She is slightly shorter than her younger brother Chris. Meg is self-conscious about her appearance ("I'm so fat and gross."^[10])

[edit]Social life

Meg desperately tries to be part of the cool crowd, but is usually coldly rebuffed. She is also usually the butt of Peter's jokes due to her homeliness and tendency towards social awkwardness. Because of her eagerness for acceptance, she has been recruited unknowingly into a suicidal religious cult,^[11] and, later, recruited, again unwittingly, into her school's Lesbian Alliance ("Brian Sings and Swings").^[12] However, in some episodes, Meg is seen with a group of girls who are attending her slumber party and gossiping about boys.^[13] In later episodes, these girls are characterized as being highly unpopular and dateless, much like Meg, even saying that she was the only one of them who ever had a boyfriend (actually a decaying corpse she was "dating").

[edit]Dating

Meg is so unpopular in high school that one student fires a nail gun into his own stomach twice (in shop class) in order to avoid a date with her, and then in a later episode shoots his own brother to have an excuse not to go to a dance with her the following night. On another occasion, Meg and Lois are looking for new clothes for Meg, but with no luck (a saleswoman ended up pouring gasoline on herself, lighting a match, catching fire, and then jumping out of a window after looking at her in a pair of jeans). However, she is sought by nerd Neil Goldman. In 8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter, Neil starts dating a girl named Cecilia, Meg becomes instantly jealous and pretends to date Jake Tucker to make him jealous. This leads to her signing a contract to become Neil's girlfriend and (not knowing at first) his slave, but she gets him to tear up the contract after Lois seduces him. Perverted neighbor Glenn Quagmire has shown a repeated interest in her, mostly due to his very low standard, asking if she has reached the age of consent (which would be 16 in Rhode Island, but he always asks if she is 18, which is what many people assume is the nation-wide age of consent).^[14] In several episodes she is shown dating, including stories with characters Mayor Adam West^[15] and nudist Jeff Campbell.^[16] She also loses her virginity on live television to Saturday Night Live host Jimmy Fallon after having a drastic makeover; but, before all that happens, she goes out with a rebel at her school named Craig Hoffman.^[17]

In the episode "Brian Sings and Swings" a lesbian student named Sarah invites Meg to join in her Lesbian Alliance Club, with Meg not knowing at first what kind of club it was. Desperate to fit in, she pretends to be a lesbian and also pretends to be attracted to Sarah and even goes so far as to kiss her to prove it. At the end of the episode, Meg goes over Sarah's house to admit she lied about being a lesbian (Sarah thought that Meg came over to have sex and even undresses herself when Meg is telling her that she lied). She also used to have a crush on anchorman Tom Tucker, but it ended after she discovered his vanity and selfishness.

In other episodes she is portrayed as chronically incapable of finding a boyfriend. For her Junior Prom she accepts a pity date from Brian, the family dog and only after threatening suicide.^[10]

Earlier in season 2, she dated Joe Swanson's son Kevin Swanson, but in "Stew-Roids" it is mentioned that Kevin died in Iraq. In the episode, "Prick Up Your Ears", she dates a boy named Doug, but he breaks up with her when he sees her naked right before almost having sex. In the episode "Peter's Daughter" Meg falls in love with a med-student named Michael Milano after coming out of a short coma (caused by Peter when he asked her to "rescue" beer out of an already flooded kitchen) and they start to date. After he breaks up with Meg (because of Peter overprotecting her after realising that he was treating her badly, and promising that if she came out of the coma, he would "treat her like a princess"), she announces that she is pregnant by Michael and the two get engaged. After finding out that she isn't actually pregnant, Meg tells Michael the truth hoping that he'll stay; however, Michael quickly leaves Meg at the altar.

[edit]Family life

Though Meg was no different than any other member of the family in the first two seasons of the show, this began to change as the show started to flesh out the characters to the point where it seems that most of the population of Quahog, including her own family, despise her for no reason other than her simply being "Meg".^[18]

Meg is the oldest child in the Griffin family, and the most misunderstood, at least by Peter, Chris, and others who are shown avoiding her company, disparaging her in person, gathering in her bedroom to read her diary for laughs,^[19] Peter reminds Lois "We agreed that if we could only save two, we'd leave Meg!"^[20] even randomly shooting her when she simply said "Hi Dad" ("Peter's Daughter") but despite this he also was going to say "I love you" in "Hell Comes to Quahog", and in "Road to Rupert" he stated they were 'secret best friends' before throwing lemonade in her face, saying he would have to continue to treat her badly in public in order to maintain his reputation due to "peer pressure", thus giving hope that they may be on good terms. Occasionally, when Meg asks a question to Peter or just speaks when he is in the room, Peter responds by saying "Shut up, Meg"-immediately followed by a line from another character.

When the family tries an anger management technique of writing letters and not sending them, Meg finds Peter's letter to her, which says "Dear Meg, for the first four years of your life, I thought that you were a house cat." ^[21] And in Peter's short story of her birth, they had to go back to get her once they realized they grabbed the afterbirth. In the episode "Stewie Kills Lois" Peter tells guests on a cruise ship about how he and Lois had gone to get an abortion but decided against it when they arrived at the clinic and found out the abortionist had one hand. He then says "2 months later, our daughter Meg was born" – indicating that they had not planned her birth. Another hint to this is when Meg is in the car with Lois and at an attempt to make civilized conversation, says "Hey Meg, did you know that if you're on birth control and you take an antibiotic it makes it not work? 'Coz no one told me! I just thought you should know." laughing awkwardly. On Meg's 17th birthday, her mother and father both try to hide from Meg that they don't remember her age.^[22] Peter openly states that Meg sucks in the episode "PTV", and Chris says the same thing about her in "Long John Peter". In "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", Brian says to Meg's face that she lives in a home "where nobody respects or cares about [her], not even enough to get [her] a damn mumps shot!" Chris, however, seems to have more of a typical brother-sister relationship with Meg. Although they fight and argue from time to time, he tends to go to her for advice. Chris even once threatened to quit his job if his boss didn't re-hire Meg (at the insistence of Lois).^[23] Cleveland comments to Peter "Meg is my least favorite of your children."^[24]

There apparently also exists a double standard against Meg which further underscores the mistreatment she suffers at the hands of the people around her. In "Big Man on Hippocampus", an episode wherein Peter loses his memory and has reacquainted himself with the pleasures of sex, Lois tells him that it is inappropriate to have sex with his own children; in response, Meg attempts an incest joke for which she is lambasted by most of her family and literally kicked out of the room by Chris.^[25] However, in the season finale "Partial Terms of Endearment", Lois tells a joke that implies that it was Meg that gave birth to Stewie, and apart from a shocked reaction from the latter, Lois receives no such violent reaction.^[26]Additionally, in "Model Misbehavior", when Lois starts a modeling career, Peter states that he willpleasure himself to Lois' pictures, followed by Chris and Meg both exclaiming "Me too!", to which Peter shouts "Oh God Meg, that's sick! That's your mother!", ignoring the fact that Chris said the same thing.

Despite the lack of respect from Peter and the neighbors, Brian admits that he cares for Meg when she goes out with Mayor Adam West. Lois has also often shown sympathy for Meg, for example, taking her to spring break at the beach and very often comforts her when she is down, very different to Peter; however, during one particular attempt to console her, she gives up after 45 minutes, gives her a Sylvia Plathnovel and a bottle of Ambien and leaves her to her misery, saying "whatever happens, happens."^[24]

The family's treatment of Meg finally reaches its limit in Dial Meg for Murder when Meg, after a short stint in a Young Offenders Institution, returns a hardened criminal. She quickly begins abusing her family and beating up anyone who makes fun of her. It is only after a conversation with Brian that she changes her ways.

In an interview, Mila Kunis stated: "Meg gets picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is constantly in the state of being an awkward 14-year-old, when you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in perpetual mode of humiliation. And it's fun."^[27]

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