Family Guy's Christmas miracle (spoiler)

Earlier this year, critic Richard Rushfeld proposed the coining of a new trope: "strangle the dog," a play on the trope of "pet the dog," in which screenwriters would have a character pet a dog as a shortcut to getting viewers to like that character.

To "strangle the dog," however, in Rushfeld's words, would "signal to viewers that a series will be highbrow, serious, and edgy."

Not a single one of those words could possibly, for any reasonable person, apply to Family Guy.