The set starts off with Stewie's first halloween, as well as an episode where Lois becomes a boxing champion fueled by her frustration at Peter, and another where Brian decides to write a self-help book just to prove it will sell well and gains a lot of success only to be humiliated on his favorite TV show, Real Time with Bill Maher.
The season really picks up with the one-hour episode "Road to the North Pole." This longer episode has a spurred Stewie deciding to go to Santa's Workshop in order to kill Santa because the mall closed down just when he and Brian got to the front of the line to sit on his lap. This musical episode is done in a Christmas Special style with narration and regular interruptions by Ron MacFarlane, Seth MacFarlane's father.
While the trip to the North Pole isn't an easy one, when Brian and Stewie do finally arrive, they find Saint Nicholas is overworked and ready to end everything. To make matters worse, in order to meet the increased demand from the kids, his original batch of elves have been bred and bred over again and the result is a whole family of inbred and mentally deficient workers. As an odd side effect, the reindeer have become feral and blood thirsty. So, of course, Brian and Stewie decide to "save Christmas" and hop into the sleigh and distribute the presents themselves. Let's just say that things don't turn out quite right, pretty much as you would expect in a Family Guy episode.
Another episode has Lois making friends with the new anchorwoman, only to have the lady reveal one of Lois' dark secrets on TV. Also, Peter and Brian are forced to attend AA meetings, only to turn them into an odd speakeasy-like meeting place for all of the other attendees.
One amusing episode, "German Guy," has a new old man coming into town and Herbert starts to get jealous when Chris starts spending more time with Franz Gutentag. When Herbert gets a closer look at his rival, he realizes that the man was a NAZI named Franz Schlechtnacht and what results is a lengthy, and frustratingly slow, fist fight between the two.
There is even a Meg-centric episode in this collection when she babysits for Joe's daughter while his wife is out of town. This episode, "The Hand The Rocks the Wheelchair," takes a dark turn when she starts reading more into her babysitting than was actually intended. This episode also has Stewie realizing that he is getting soft, so he creates a machine that should restore his former evil nature, only to have it create a clone that is pure evil.
Family Guy even takes one of the classic sitcom storylines by having Meg and Chris switch roles with Peter and Lois to determine just which pair has the tougher life. At first, it seems that the kids have the tougher life since they have to deal with all of the social pitfalls that high school entails, but Chris' quick success at Peter's job causes more and more work to be piled on him which results in both a mental breakdown and a heart attack.
Family Guy, Volume Ten also contains an episode where Stewie decides to have some fun with his time machine, only to have he and Brian pulled out of the spacetime continuum all together. Upon returning, Stewie's half-brother and rival, Bertram, decides to use the machine to kill one of Stewie's ancestors, Leonardo da Vinci. That particular episode seems like it would be a much stronger finish than the season finale, "Foreign Affairs," where Lois and Bonnie (Joe's wife) head to Paris for a vacation. Bonnie intends to cheat on Joe while out of town, but Lois is doing everything she can to stop the one-night stand. Meanwhile, Peter is in charge of the kids and when there are rumors of a goat flu epidemic, he takes Meg and Chris out of school and teaches them on his own. Let's just say, this is a pretty disastrous move on his part.
Family Guy, Volume Ten's special features include commentaries and animatics on select episode, as well as making-of's for both "Road to the North Pole" and the big fight scene in "German Guy." Outside of some deleted scenes, the other special feature is the filming of Adam West's Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony placed in front of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum.
Family Guy, Volume Ten has a lot of fun episodes in it and I would recommend the collection for any fan of the series. Personally, "Road to the North Pole" and "The Big Bang Theory," the time-traveling episode, pretty much make the collection, but episodes like "Brian Writes a Bestseller" and "Friends of Peter G." just make the package that much better. Actually, most of the episodes in this season are worth watching for anyone who is still a follower of the Griffin family.
