Meg Griffin

Personality

Similar to Lois, Meg has gone through numerous personality changes since the debut of the show in 1999. In early seasons, she was portrayed as a self-conscious and insecure adolescent. She is treated unfairly and abused by various people and has numerous insecurities that prompt her to try to be part of the "in-crowd". However, this only results in her getting rebuffed by the many bullies of this circle, particularly Connie D'Amico, the head cheerleader of the local high school, James Woods Regional High School. In contrast to this, a nerdy Jewish student named Neil Goldman is attracted to her, to her dismay.

While Meg is usually a pushover, she can get angry when pushed too far, though such occasions are usually rare. This can be seen in the episode "Seahorse Seashell Party", where she strongly insults and defames Peter, Lois, and even Chris for their inconsiderate actions toward her. In the episode "Road to Rupert", Meg assaults a man for insulting her after a fender-bender, and in "The Chicken or the Meg", she decapitates Ernie the Giant Chicken's head after a heated argument. In later seasons, she is shown to be very snarky and deliberately unpredictable towards others, such as in "The Marrying Kind", where she tells off Lois after the latter seeks validation for her jokes. Later seasons exaggerate her uncouth behavior and completely disregard her punching-bag status.

Despite her persistent mistreatment, Meg has proven a variety of times throughout the series that she is more talented and has greater potential than most people bother to realize, such as bird calls, playing the saxophone, speaking and singing in foreign languages, and even sports such as bowling, field hockey, basketball, roller derby, and even Olympic sports. However, her parents are unaware of her talents, oftentimes being completely surprised at her apparent skills.

Many of the show's storylines about Meg involve her trying to improve her life, finding a boyfriend, and reaching breaking points with her family and others who victimize her. She often becomes obsessed with men who show any kindness or affection to her, including the Griffins' friend and neighbor Joe Swanson in the episode "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair", and Brian in "Barely Legal". In addition to this, she has been shown to have suicidal tendencies, which has been exacerbated by the abuse she suffers at the hands of her parents.

Voice actors

On the season 1 DVD commentary for the Drawn Together episode "Hot Tub", Cree Summer claims she was offered the role to play Meg but was dismissed by the producers. Meg was voiced by an uncredited Lacey Chabert for the first season, and by Mila Kunis in subsequent seasons after Chabert became busy with school and her role on Party of Five, although some of her work became second season episodes due to production order. Mila Kunis won the role after a series of auditions and callbacks where she was asked to speak more slowly and enunciate more; she was ultimately hired despite being unsure she understood what was expected of her. MacFarlane felt that Kunis invigorated the character, and that her work on That '70s Show showed she could command a scene. MacFarlane stated that Kunis "had a very natural quality to Meg" and she's "in a lot of ways [...] almost more right for the character". Kunis' voice is first heard as Meg in Episode 3 of season two "Da Boom", and the voices switch back and forth in the broadcast order until settling on Kunis. Tara Strong provides Meg's singing voice in "Don't Make Me Over". Archival recordings of Lacey Chabert's voice that she provided as Meg Griffin are used in the tenth season episode "Back to the Pilot" in which Brian and Stewie go back in time to the events of "Death Has a Shadow". However, Chabert does in fact return for the eleventh season episode "Yug Ylimaf" as Stewie references the fact that time has reversed so much that Meg's voice has reverted back from that of Kunis' to Chabert's.

Lacey Chabert (1999–2000; 2011 archive recordings, 2012)

Mila Kunis (1999–present)

Tara Strong (singing voice)

Social life

In the first three seasons of the show, Meg was portrayed with a more whiny and uptight personality who was often embarrassed by the family’s acts of bumbling and stupidity, though they cared for her and meant well. In the post-cancellation seasons, this began to change as the inadvertent embarrassment became deliberate bullying and disrespect. Additionally, the show started to flesh out the characters to the point where most of the population of Quahog who knows her, or even just meets her, picks on or disdains her for no reason other than her simply being "Meg".

Meg is depicted as being unpopular in high school due to both her plain appearance and personality. She desperately tries to be part of the cool crowd, but is usually coldly rebuffed. Because of her eagerness for acceptance, she has been recruited "unknowingly" into a suicidal religious cult, and later recruited again unwittingly into her school's Lesbian Alliance (in the episode "Brian Sings and Swings" ). However, Meg does have a moderate number of friends, the best of whom being a group of girls who are often seen with her during occasions such as her slumber parties and gossiping about boys. In later episodes, these girls, known by the names Beth, Patty, Collette, Esther, and Ruth, are characterized as being highly unpopular and dateless, much like Meg.

In some cases, Meg is depicted as being so unpopular at school that in one instance, a student fires a nail gun into his own abdomen twice (in shop class) in order to avoid a date with her, and in a later episode, another student shoots his own brother as an excuse not to go to a dance with her the following night. In "Don't Make Me Over", Lois is looking for new clothes for Meg, but with no luck; a saleswoman ends up pouring gasoline on herself, lighting a match, catching fire, and then jumping out of a window after looking at Meg in a pair of jeans. However, she is sought by nerd Neil Goldman. In "8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter", Neil starts dating a girl named Cecilia, Meg becomes instantly jealous and pretends to date Jake Tucker to make him jealous. This leads to her signing a contract to become Neil's girlfriend and (not knowing at first) his slave, but she gets him to tear up the contract after Lois seduces him. Perverted neighbor Glenn Quagmire has shown a repeated interest in her, mostly due to his very low standards, asking if she has reached the age of consent. Quagmire comes close to succeeding in "Meg and Quagmire" when Lois tells Peter to back off after he was ruining Meg and Quagmire's 'dates'. Then, they rescue Meg after Glenn takes her to his cabin, Peter and Lois arriving in time before anything happens. Joe and Cleveland are generally more accepting of her, with Cleveland allowing her to stay at his house when she's dealing with various family issues, such as in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", and "Petarded". In very rare instances, he shows disdain over her, such as in "Hell Comes to Quahog".". In "The Hand That Rocks the Wheelchair", Joe rushes her to the hospital after she's accidentally run over by his vehicle, afterwards telling her that he's lucky to have her as his neighbor.

Family life

Out of all the members of the family, her father Peter abuses her the most, making her the butt of his jokes and picking on her numerous times. Occasionally, when Meg asks a question to Peter or just speaks when he is in the room, Peter responds by saying "Shut up, Meg". Despite this, he is shown to care deeply about her in various episodes, such as in "Meg and Quagmire" when he goes out of his way to prevent friend and neighbor Glenn Quagmire from having sex with her, and in "This Little Piggy" where he tries to get Meg out of a foot fetishism business. In later seasons, Peter's kindness towards her is more open, sometimes showing remorsefulness in certain situations.

She is jokingly implied to have been unwanted by Lois and Peter numerous times in the show. For instance, In the episode "Stewie Kills Lois", Peter tells guests on a cruise ship about how he and Lois had gone to get an abortion but decided against it when they arrived at the clinic and found out the abortionist had one hand. He then says "two and a half months later, our daughter Meg was born" – Much to Lois's embarrassment, causing her to get mad with Peter. In numerous episodes, she is jokingly implied to have been dropped off at a Fire Station when she was an Infant, such as in "Ratings Guy" and "Baking Sad".

Brian's attention initially softens the lack of respect from Peter and the rest of family; he admits that he cares for Meg when she goes out with Mayor Adam West. While initially seeming to have more common decency for Meg than most people, this appears to almost completely disappear after the tenth season, as Brian's increasingly shallow and self-centered character begins to take more pleasure and joy in being rotten to Meg and often refuses to give her the time of day, such as desperately trying to avoid having to comfort her, finding humor in her being puked on, and even willing to deliberately urinate on her bed. Stewie on the other hand occasionally shows disdain towards her due to his personality, but softens up towards her in numerous episodes. In "Stand By Meg", she saves him from choking to death on a grape, earning his respect towards her. He is also shown to prefer sitting on Meg's lap numerous times throughout the show, as opposed to Lois. In some episodes, Brian and Stewie attempt to help Meg numerous times throughout the show, such as in "Leggo My Meg-O", where they rescue her from Human Traffickers, and "Baking Sad", where they help her start up a cookie business.

Her most significant relationship is with her brother Chris, where he sometimes shares the brunt of the family's abuse just like her. In numerous episodes they're seen teaming up, such as in "The Heartbreak Dog", where they both steal from a retirement home to get back at the residents mistreating her, and "Young Parent Trap", where they disguise themselves as a young couple to spy on Peter and Lois on vacation. Despite this, he is sometimes shown to abuse her, such as in "Better Off Meg" where he capitalizes on her falsified death to gain popularity within school (and kidnaps her when she comes back).

Reception

Reception of Meg Griffin's character has been mostly positive, with her being ranked number 11 on "IGN's Top 25 Family Guy Characters". However, critical reception on her character has been mixed, with most criticism headed towards how the writers handled her character. In a review for "Seahorse Seashell Party", Kevin McFarland of The A.V. Club wrote "I feel bad about Meg becoming the scapegoat. Not because she’s a good character, but because instead of tweaking and working to make her appreciated or comically valuable, Family Guy spent years going down the path of least resistance and simply joined the fan chorus of hatred. One episode of pointed, forced justification for that shift doesn’t change a thing."

In an interview, Mila Kunis stated: "Meg gets picked on a lot. But it's funny. It's like the middle child. She is constantly in the state of being an awkward 16-year-old, when you're kind of going through puberty and what-not. She's just in perpetual mode of humiliation, and it's fun."

In November 2016, when asked by Splitsider if the writers will further develop the characters of Chris and Meg in future episodes, showrunner Alec Sulkin confirmed that the series crew members are working on doing so and added that there are plans for an episode where Meg comes out as a lesbian, taking inspiration from previous instances in which she exhibited signs of lesbian characteristics, like when she joins a lesbian alliance group at school in "Brian Sings and Swings" and is identified as a "transgender man" named "Ron" in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the latter which takes place in the future. However, Sulkin also noted that the plotline has not yet been finalized and thus isn't officially set to be used in an episode.