Diane Simmons’s Last Appearance Before The 'Fewer’ Murder Spree Was As An April Fools Prankster

Happy belated April Fools Day! Terrified to undercut my integrity with a prank article, let’s explore a prank episode

Every Family Guy fan knows and remembers Diane Simmons. The Channel 5 news anchor and talk show host voiced by Lori Alan whose intended murder of ex-boyfriend James Woods exploded into a spree of five including Woods, Derek Wilcox, ex-assistant Stephanie, Priscilla, and Muriel Goldman in the season 9 premiere “And Then There Were Fewer”, ready to frame co-anchor Tom Tucker for all of it. She almost killed Lois Griffin too if the latter’s infant son Stewie hadn’t sniped from afar. But something that might not click for many people is that her actions in her penultimate appearance is one where she had her part in 87 suicides. Ladies and gentlemen, seeing as it’s still April and under a week since April Fools’ Day, let’s talk “April in Quahog”.

“April in Quahog” is the sixteenth episode of Family Guy’s eighth season. That is 16th out of 21 stories the length of 22. It opens with Tom and Diane throwing to Tricia Takanawa’s field piece interviewing Stephen Hawking about his discovery of a black hole at the edge of the solar system, after which it’s revealed Hawking is faking his disability. After Peter Griffin’s jury duty excursion, Tom reports with Diane that the black hole’s expansion has already seen Neptune and Pluto consumed. Scientists reportedly estimating the event horizon would reach Earth by the next day. All life on Earth, as Diane adds, would be destroyed in 24 hours. The entire town, including Jesus Christ gets down to completing their unfinished business and doing whatever wild things they can as the end of days approaches. Mayor Adam West writes a strongly worded letter to outer space and delivers it and a punch to Orion via jet pack. Remember that now, it’s going to come up again. Diane watches as Tom launches “Tom’s Crank Calls”, where for some reason he calls Megan Fox with personal death threats even when the planet is about to be consumed by a black hole. And now we know where Stewie, who was watching from home, got the idea to pull this on Moe Szyslak in the crossover “The Simpsons Guy”. As night falls and the gaping maw of the black hole approaches, Channel 5 puts on a humanity highlight reel. The countdown goes and when it expires, the pair screams “APRIL FOOLS!”. They reveal this was a network-wide stunt that was part of their commitment to being festive around the holidays. It resulted in the aforementioned 87 suicides and widespread looting, but is still deemed a success. The pair promptly exit the episode as the story pivots to the consequences of Peter’s very awkward what is essentially deathbed confession of his feelings about his kids. The network therefore faces no consequences themselves.

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Now, if I may, I have to lambast the absolute gullibility of this prank. Nobody looked up in the sky, nobody checked other news networks, which apparently they do watch otherwise Tom wouldn’t be griping about being third in the ratings later on, nobody called anyone outside of Quahog to check, the only person to even question it briefly was Meg, assuaged by Lois’s “It sure looks like it sweetie.” No other live programming that could be from other parts of the world are shown. Nobody bothers to do any research on the internet. The so-called all-powerful son of G-d, Jesus, who should have the knowledge as to whether there really is such black hole, personally pranks the Jewish Mort Goldman with a joybuzzer, having feigned agenda, and flips him off, telling him “Have fun where you’re going!”. Adam West literally manages to go to space to punch Orion and doesn’t look around to see whether there’s actually a black hole around. Most of all, the planet wasn’t physically being torn apart at all even in what was supposed to be the planet’s final seconds. And again, why would Tom be telling someone they’re going to kill them if the planet is going to be consumed by a black hole anyway? Doesn’t that kind of give away the whole game?

But yeah, that’s the note Diane goes out on before her murder plot and subsequent death. Why is she absent for the rest of the season after this? Well, multiple explainable circumstances, all of them in-universe. The very next episode is “Brian and Stewie”, which features only Brian and Stewie as they survive more than a day locked in a bank vault. “The Splendid Source” starts with Chris getting in trouble with a joke he got from Quagmire, who terrorizes Peter with said joke which causes him to shit his pants every time they laugh at it. Tracking down the source of said joke takes them way out of town all the way to a secret island. Not a lot of wiggle room for a local newscast. “Quagmire’s Dad” is the only episode left that maybe could’ve had something, but it does not. This is the season that ends (on TV anyway) with “Something Something Something Dark Side”, the show’s telling of The Empire Strikes Back, where her imperial news anchor role from “Blue Harvest” still wouldn’t be Diane herself, and is absent anyway. And then there’s the banned-from-TV-and-Hulu abortion episode “Partial Terms of Endearment”, where strangely (and difficult to read into) Tom is anchoring solo when he reports on the fatal crash killing Naomi and Dale Robinson, Lois’s college friend and her husband who had just begun a surrogacy with their baby.

I am fully aware Family Guy is a comedy series. Not everything is meant to be taken seriously. Physics isn’t always adhered to in any cartoon. But there are way too many whacks in these circumstances at the suspension of disbelief that it can only stretch so far. And everything that happens with Peter regarding his dislike of his kids plays off so awkwardly and sour that it further brings down an episode already plentiful in logical holes. What a weird final episode for Diane as we knew her. This whole thing has been on my mind for a while, and stuck even harder after Gary Rysavy, aka Stayathomegary, who has over a million TikTok followers thanks to his wholly solely acted recreations of scenes from animated Fox shows (sometimes in direct collaboration!), posted his recreation of the final seconds of the countdown. My comment pointing out Diane’s story positioning has 55 likes. I knew I had to write something fuller. Maybe next time I’ll make the case that a Meg jab has aged better into a meta joke 20 years on.

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