One of the most irreverent and overtly crude shows on network television these days is Family Guy. Family Guy’s fan base is huge, almost as big as its detractors, and when the show went off the air in 2002, it only took three years of incredible DVD sales and Adult Swim ratings to win it back. One of the keys to the Family Guy formula is to take key points from 80 years of popular culture and mock and lampoon it.

The list of awesome Family Guy episodes is huge, but when you have 75 episodes to go, where do you start (that is, of course, if you decide not to watch every episode five times). Some of the best episodes in the Family Guy archive are the ones that take the most ravenous attitude towards what they lampoon. Without further ado, the five best satirical episodes of Family Guy

1. There’s Something About Paulie -Season 2. In this spoof of the mob mentality in which Peter is enlisted to see Big Fat Paulie, a relative mobster from Jersey, get treated during his visit to Quahog, when he accidentally makes Paulie give him a blow to Lois. Chaos ensues, ending with the wedding of the best man’s daughter and tiramisu. Classic family man humor with some solid asides.

2. Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington – Season 3. Peter almost gets fired after missing work for a baseball game. The El Dorado Cigarette Company buys the company and he is lucky to keep his job. He is sent to Washington as a tobacco lobbyist, where he finally sees the errors of his ways after Stewie starts smoking and starts coughing. Classic shipments of political culture and movies are produced. He beat up Bob Dole, Martha Stewart and presidential candidates Gore and Bush.

3. Method to Madness: Stewie joins an acting school where he meets Olivia and a classic rags-to-riches story ensues together, after which Stewie fails and Olivia lives without him. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series occurs here when Olivia tells Stewie, “You’re the weakest link,” referencing the short-lived game show from the same era. Stewie responds with a prolonged assault on his intelligence in classic Stewie fashion.

4. Brian Goes Back To College: Brian loses his new job at the New Yorker for not finishing his college education. After which he decides to go back to Brown. The Stewie/Brian tag throughout the plot is fully established at this point in the series, so Stewie goes with it. Stewie loves college life while Brian tries to quit, unable to complete his last class. Academic battle with Rocky themes and classic college movie stereotypes make this a great episode.

5. Da Boom – An oldie but a goodie, playing on all the Y2K fears of the late ’90s. Airing the day after Christmas 1999, the episode follows the destruction of the world’s infrastructure and the post-apocalyptic journeys of the Griffin family to find a Twinkie factory they can live off of. The mutations of his friends and the reform of the landscape are reminiscent of the post-nuclear classics of the 50s and 60s and Stewie finally becomes an octopus. The end of the episode is a flashback to the whole Dallas fiasco when Bobby is in the shower and Pam describes “dreaming him up” of him. The height of irony and satire of the near-mass hysteria the world nearly felt in late 1999.

Family Guy is more than five great episodes. Until a small part of season 4 in 2005, the show was pure genius and each of Seth McFarlane’s vignettes in suburban Rhode Island is a joy to watch over and over again.