Season 16 · Episode 12 · First aired 18 March 2018
Send in Stewie, Please
Episode 12 of Family Guy season 16 (S16E12), the 301st Family Guy episode overall. Written by Gary Janetti and directed by Joe Vaux. First broadcast on 18 March 2018.
Story
A shove that sent a classmate down the stairs at Quahog Preschool brings Stewie before Dr Cecil Pritchfield, a psychologist who works with children. The session runs as one long conversation. Stewie reads the doctor's marriage from a photograph and lays bare how uneasy the doctor is about the age gap between himself and his husband. Pritchfield in turn names Stewie's loneliness, and Stewie breaks down. Over the rest of the session Stewie sets out his difficulty fitting in, his anxiety and his wish to work on Broadway. He also drops his British accent, which turns out to have been assumed, before deciding to keep it after all. Pritchfield then suffers a heart attack. Stewie withholds the medication and lets the one person who has seen through him die. That night guilt wakes him, and he calls Brian to his bed.
Production and reception
- Gary Janetti wrote the part of Pritchfield for Ian McKellen, whom he had previously cast in Vicious, the British sitcom Janetti co-created. Wikipedia, Send In Stewie, Please
- Fox promoted the broadcast as the first Family Guy episode with limited commercial interruption, running 25 minutes with PlayStation as the sole sponsor. Wikipedia, Send In Stewie, Please
- In the United States 2.24 million people watched the first broadcast, and the Nielsen rating among adults aged 18 to 49 was 1.0. Wikipedia, Send In Stewie, Please
- Steve Greene of IndieWire graded it B minus, picking out the bottle episode format and the absence of cutaway gags. Wikipedia, Send In Stewie, Please
- Seth MacFarlane took a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance, losing to his co-star Alex Borstein for "Nanny Goats". Wikipedia, Send In Stewie, Please
Voices
| Voice | Characters |
|---|---|
| Seth MacFarlane | Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin |
| Alex Borstein | Lois Griffin |
| Seth Green | Chris Griffin |
| Mila Kunis | Meg Griffin |
| Mike Henry | Cleveland Brown |
| Ian McKellen | Dr. Cecil Pritchfield |
| Gary Janetti | Michael |
| Nickie Bryar | Preschool Girl, Preschool Girl |
Principal voice credits as recorded by IMDb, which lists up to ten credits per episode, so recurring characters can be missing here. Guest voices below come from Wikipedia and TVmaze.
Guest voices
- Ian McKellen as Dr. Cecil Pritchfield
- Gary Janetti as Michael
Season 16: episode 12 of 20
- E1Emmy-Winning Episode
- E2Foxx in the Men House
- E3Nanny Goats
- E4Follow the Money
- E5Three Directors
- E6The D in Apartment 23
- E7Petey IV
- E8Crimes and Meg's Demeanor
- E9Don't Be a Dickens at Christmas
- E10Boy (Dog) Meets Girl (Dog)
- E11Dog Bites Bear
- E12Send in Stewie, PleaseYou are here
- E13V Is for Mystery
- E14Veteran Guy
- E15The Woof of Wall Street
- E16Family Guy Through the Years
- E17Switch the Flip
- E18HTTPete
- E19The Unkindest Cut
- E20Are You There God? It's Me, Peter
SourceFacts from Wikipedia: Family Guy season 16 and the episode's article (CC BY-SA 4.0). Spotted an error? See corrections.
Provenance
Facts only- Sources
- Data refreshed
- 6 September 2026
- Verification
- Checked against Wikidata and IMDb: title, date, numbering and credits agree
- Licence
- Facts are not copyrightable. Source text on Wikipedia is CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikidata is CC0; IMDb data is used for verification under its non-commercial terms.
- Note
- The story summary and notes were written for this site from the sources listed, by Claude in Claude Code on 2026-09-08, awaiting editorial review. Facts only; no dialogue is reproduced. Voice credits: Information courtesy of IMDb (https://www.imdb.com). Used with permission. Guest cast data from TVmaze (https://www.tvmaze.com), CC BY-SA.