The Best and Worst of Lois Griffin By Tae Fansick
Lois Griffin has earned her place as one of the most well-known mothers in animation. She’s gone
through a lot of changes over the years, and we’ve been able to see the best and worst sides of her
character. But out of all the things Lois has done, which was the best? And which was the worst?
I’m Brad with WickedBinge and these are Lois Griffin’s Deeds: Good to Evil
Let’s start out with Lois’ Good Deeds. Kind and even heroic acts that Lois is responsible for.
Starting with some Good and working our way towards the most noble.
Our first spot on this list goes to Helping Brian.
Of all the members of the Griffin family, Brian was always someone Lois was seen going to for
advice. Especially in the first few seasons we see a really close friendship between the two. Despite
Brian claiming his best friend is Peter, it’s easy to say that Lois could take that title.
Lois and Brian could have very conflicting views, but she was the one to call out a lot of Brian’s
behavior. When she felt that Brian was being brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh,
Lois had made a point to show how determined Brian was to always be on
the losing end of things, flat out calling him a contrarian.
And regardless of your political beliefs, it was clear that Lois had a point during that argument.
When Brian was upset with Peter for giving Jillian the idea to move in together,
Lois defended the idea. She made the comment that if Brian didn’t want the same things
Jillian did, then he should put an end to the relationship.
When Brian won a trip to Martha’s Vineyard to present his speech,
Lois had been the only one to show up to his big night and show him some support.
When he wound up having an accident in the middle of the grocery store,
Lois quickly tied her sweater around him and led Brian out to the car.
She may not have stayed the nurturing and patient friend that she had been in early episodes,
but we still have to give credit to Lois for calling out Brian when he
was being ridiculous and hearing him out when he needed to vent.
Next up we have Supporting Her Brother and Sister.
When Lois came across a family photo that had Patrick in it,
she tried to do the right thing by freeing him from the Brookfield Insane Asylum.
This wound up not being a good idea, but we can see why Lois assumed that
her parents just sent Patrick away due to him just being an inconvenience.
When she found out that Patrick was killing people, Lois didn’t exactly call the police
like she should have, but she did at least try to stop Patrick by reaching out to him. And
though she had to have him re-committed, she did show a lot of regret in having to do so. Though
she and Patrick didn’t know each other long, she wanted to be there for him.
As for Lois’ sister Carol, she needed help in a different way.
Carol suffered from low self-esteem, which led to her rushing into relationships and
getting a broken heart when those marriages didn’t work.
Having all of Carol’s ex’s show up to Adam West’s home to remind Carol of her mistakes was
overkill, but we understand that it came from a well-meaning place.
Lois didn’t believe that Carol would be able to handle the trauma of another failed relationship,
and so did what she could to try and help. Luckily, Lois was able to amend her mistake and be
more supportive of her sister, but we get that it came from a good place.
Taking the bronze medal of her most heroic deed is Stopping Bonnie.
While Lois is guilty of being unfaithful to Peter,
we still have to commend how far she went to try and stop Bonnie from leaving Joe.
Lois had been unhappy to hear that Bonnie was only traveling for the sake of having an affair
far from home, where she wouldn’t be caught. But upon hearing that Bonnie was seriously
considering leaving her husband and daughter behind, Lois made the choice to call Joe.
Throughout this episode, Lois was seen trying to convince Bonnie not to go
through with her plans. It wasn’t until Bonnie claimed she didn’t have much reason
to go back home that Lois called Joe to convince Bonnie to return to Quahog.
Lois even got involved later on when Bonnie and Joe almost split after Joe’s affair,
leading Bonnie to the strip club where she and Joe could meet again.
We are well aware that Lois is nowhere near the most faithful
wife in animation. And that she really had no business asking Joe to go all the way to France
to confront his wife. But when you break down what Lois stated whenever she tried to get through to
Bonnie, it made sense as to why she thought Joe and Bonnie staying together was the best option.
Everytime Bonnie brought up having an affair or leaving her husband,
Lois would mention their daughter Susie. During a conversation in a much earlier episode,
when Peter and Lois’ marriage was being revealed as highly dysfunctional, Lois made the comment
that they just needed to get Stewie to college and that was it. Lois has been taught that having two
parents that detest one another to some degree was better than having parents that were split
up. It’s an incredibly warped view and Lois did not have the qualifications to help anyone with
their marriage. But this motivation and viewpoint explains why she felt the need to get involved.
The silver medal ranking of her greatest action was Trying to Help the City.
There are a few episodes where Lois took on the task of trying to make Quahog better in some way.
After swimming in a contaminated lake, Lois confronted Mayor West. When she saw that he
wasn’t motivated to change where the oil company spilled their waste, Lois decided to run for
mayor in order to change things. Unfortunately, Lois didn’t hold out and turned the position
back over to Adam West. Yes, she stopped it when they tried to resume the dumping,
but they just wanted someone in office that would “play ball,” which Mayor West said he would do.
Lois didn’t stop there though, and would run for another office: a place on the school board.
Initially, she had been facing off against another woman before running unopposed. But
after seeing a teacher, Mr Fargus, toss eggs of an endangered species off of the roof of the school,
Lois supported the choice to let Fargus go. Peter, being the one that got Fargus off his medication,
demanded Lois rehire the old teacher. This was another race that Lois ultimately didn’t win,
but it was a good attempt before Peter sabotaged her image.
In a recent episode, Lois disagreed with the choice to elect Wild West as mayor just because
he was related to Adam. She showed her support towards the local librarian running for office,
driving home the point to the community that they should vote for someone with
a good platform rather than someone with a familiar family name. Again,
she was unsuccessful in trying to change the town, but we appreciate the effort.
Finally, with the gold medal ranking as Lois’ most heroic action we have Calling Peter Out.
Lois is far from being a model citizen or mother of the year, but her husband Peter
is on another level of neglect. By far some of the best and most memorable times
in the show involving Lois are times when she presses Peter to be a better husband and father.
When Peter got liposuction and further hurt Chris’ self-esteem...When
Peter made a bar in the basement just to avoid the family rather than help
out...When Peter was exposed as being the one to knock out the television but let Meg take
the fall...Lois was always quick to point out when Peter messed up. She was always getting
on his case for not being a good role model and not trying to get to know his children.
After Peter beat up a neighbor’s child that had been bullying Chris, Lois demanded he go
and apologize. When Peter decided he liked being a bully and in control of his friends and neighbors,
Lois had been the one to make Peter realize he was being the
same terror that made his own childhood so awful.
When everyone was tricked by the news station’s April Fool’s prank,
Peter wound up revealing that he hated being around his children. Afterwards, Meg, Chris
and Stewie avoided him and made it clear that they were upset. Lois supported them expressing their
anger, telling Peter that if he couldn’t connect with them, then that was his issue, not theirs.
After Peter and Meg came back from a trip, Lois tried to get Meg to think
about her future rather than focusing on a good relationship with Peter.
She knew that going to Peter to get him to stop was useless and so had to confront Meg
directly. It was a shame that Lois knew Peter would be more concerned with being
Meg’s friend than thinking about her future, but at least Lois knew how to approach the issue.
We’ve already established earlier in this list that Lois is not the best mother or
wife. The more the show goes on, the more evident this becomes,
But when the initial episodes were airing, Lois used her anger and her manipulation
tactics to protect her children and support her family rather than tear them down.
Now let’s flip to the other end of the spectrum and look at Lois’ Evil Deeds.
Starting with the least offensive and working our way towards the most disgraceful.
Taking the spot of Lois’ least evil deed we have Going on the Run.
In an early season of the show, Lois falls into the habit of kleptomania. She started small,
stealing shirts and jewelry before moving onto valuable paintings.
Her need to constantly push the limits of what she could get away eventually led
to her getting attention from police, and she was arrested.
But the mess of what happened after is what earned this adventure as one of her worst actions.
After the family visited her in jail, Lois went along with a poorly put together plan
to break her out. The Griffins were forced to leave everything behind and start over
in ChinaTown, making new lives for themselves while hiding from police.
Though Lois had made a horrified comment at their predicament as they were fleeing from the prison,
she quickly adapted and accepted that her family was going to be in hiding with her, all because
she couldn’t control her impulses. Standing at the window to watch for police in shifts,
being forced in a small apartment, and getting by with the bare minimum… Lois was fine putting
her family through all of it so long as it meant she could be with them and out of jail.
It wasn’t until they were running through the sewers to get away from Joe and the rest of
the police force that Lois finally had her revelation that none of this was okay. And
if you think we’re being too harsh about ranking this as one of the worst deeds,
we would like to point out that Lois nearly got a lenient sentence...until
she tried stealing the judge’s gavel, proving she had little to no control over herself.
Our next section goes to Lois’ many Violent Outbursts.
When Lois punches someone out for attacking her husband, she’s initially horrified and
wants nothing to do with it. Lois actually had more than a few times where she clearly stated
she didn’t support violence of any kind. But any time she was given a chance to
take up an aggressive sport or hobby, Lois was always the one to take things too far.
She used her karate to brawl with tourists. She lashed out at Peter and wound up encouraging
the whole family to let out their pent up anger by nearly killing each other. She wound up excelling
in boxing just because she focused all the anger she had towards Peter on her opponents.
The ongoing trend with such episodes is always revealed as
Lois having an unhealthy amount of hatred towards Peter and the things he does.
Rather than dealing with these issues in a healthy way like doing serious counseling
or getting a divorce, Lois instead channeled her aggression into some form of fighting.
The bronze medal ranking of her most evil actions is The Abuse of Her Children.
In the first few seasons of the show, Lois wasn’t the best mom,
but she was at least trying to help her children. She tried to get Meg out of her shell,
she supported Chris, and she tackled a dog to save Stewie’s favorite bear...
But the more the show progressed, the more Lois’ mothering changed for the worse. She started
outright insulting her kids, giving them nicknames like “dum-dum” or “bighead.” She attempted to
steal away Meg’s boyfriend just because Peter was making her insecure. She manipulated Meg to
do things she didn’t want to, like taking care of Joe while Bonnie was out of town.
When she took Meg to Spring Break, Lois not only spent the time neglecting her underage daughter,
but she slips how Meg became an accident. When Chris was upset, Lois asked him if he planned
to kill himself, stating that it would make her look like a bad mother if he did….Only for her
to quickly come up with a plan of how to redeem her image, saying she would spin it to seem it
was a miracle he lasted as long as he did. When Doctor Hartman estimated that Stewie would be
shorter than expected, Lois then asked if Stewie would also die at a young age, looking optimistic.
When Carter was temporarily blind and asked Lois to look after him, Lois insisted that Stewie
needed her, hitting him to make him cry. Stewie even makes the comment that “she does this a lot.”
Lois was also proven that she could be just as neglectful as Peter after he tried pinning
Stewie’s injuries on her. When Lois found Stewie under the car, she became frantic.
Instead of insisting to rush Stewie to the hospital, she pleaded with Peter to
help her hide the crime until they could pin it on someone else. This
was the same thing the rest of the family had done for the majority of the episode,
but there was something especially unsettling with how quickly Lois came up with that plan.
The silver medal of her most evil actions is Throwing Out Her Whole Family.
After making the entire family go on a cleaning spree, Lois is happy for a little while. Soon she
goes further and further with throwing everything away and minimizing everything in her life.
When Peter began acting like a nuisance, tracking sand and crabs in the bed, Lois decided to kick
him out of the house as he wasn’t bringing her joy. This first part is an overreaction,
with Lois even fumbling and stating that it was what the book said she should do. Considering
Peter and Lois’ relationship in later episodes, it would make sense that Lois would eventually come
to the conclusion that Peter no longer makes her happy. In fact they nearly go their separate ways
in several different episodes, only to rush to make up in the last five or so minutes.
However, the reason we’re placing this as one of Lois’ most evil actions is because she doesn’t
simply stop at Peter. Soon everything bothers her. She took away Meg’s glasses because they were
“cluttering up her face.” She drags Stewie’s time machine down the stairs and lays into her kids,
thinking that they were hiding science fair projects in Stewie’s bedroom. Lois was so focused
being on the warpath, she didn’t even notice the jumps through time caused by her handing a piece
of technology she was not qualified to deal with. What followed was Lois throwing everyone else out
of the house one by one. Even Stewie, who claimed he was only kicked out for using his diaper.
After Lois was finally alone in an empty house, she spiraled further.
She didn’t understand why she wasn’t happy after getting rid of everything
and only snapped out of her obsessive state when she was saved by a punch of garbage.
This whole episode showed how close Lois was to the edge and how she managed to take the
smallest things and turn them into a mess that nearly destroyed her family.
It’s the level of inconsiderate viewers normally expect from Peter, but with Lois it came off more
unsettling. Where Peter would often get wrapped up in something and not even realize how his family
was affected by his actions, Lois knew what she was doing. When everyone voiced their concerns,
Lois responded every time by saying it wasn’t bringing her joy and therefore not important.
Finally, we have the gold medal ranking of Lois’ most evil action: Committing Murder.
That's right. Lois has indeed been confirmed
to have committed a couple or murders throughout the show.
Chris had pointed out at one point that Lois had run over a pedestrian, to which no one really
responded. When Chris was in a daze after being traumatized by the death of Arthur Valentine, Lois
herself confessed to killing someone, stating that every mother had done it at some point. When Peter
had a harmonica stuck in him, Lois had come home and confessed to finding a child under her car,
which led to her fleeing and riding a train far south until she felt it was safe to return home.
In a more recent episode, Lois became obsessed with being dubbed the customer of the week at
a local coffee shop. She does everything she can to get the title and her photo on the wall,
including spending hundreds of dollars on a painting one of the employees did.
After Chris suggested she try saving one of the employee’s lives,
Lois formulated a plan to target one of the baristas using a small packet of peanuts.
Lois then waited for the young woman to have a reaction, not anticipating that she would
be able to drive just far enough to get into a major wreck. In an effort to hide the now
attempted murder, Lois then kidnapped another employee and held his roommates
hostage before she was eventually caught. All while repeating that she was a kind and loving
person who didn’t do these sorts of things. But let us know in the comment section if
you agree with our ranking. And tell us what we should cover next. Remember to
hit that notification bell and binge more of our videos. But most importantly, stay wicked.