Lois is the mother and matriarch of the Griffin family. She and her husband, Peter, have three children: Meg, Chris, and Stewie, along with the family dog, Brian. Lois is often portrayed as a stereotypical television mother and housewife, despite her admitting to being a recovering methamphetamine addict and a kleptomaniac.
In three months, MacFarlane created the Griffin family and developed a pilot for the show he called Family Guy.[14] Brian's character was largely based on Steve from the Larry and Steve cartoon, with Larry serving as the primary basis of the Peter character.[15] The character's personality was also inspired by a friend of his father who fell asleep while watching the 1993 film Philadelphia.[16] The network executives were impressed with the pilot and ordered thirteen episodes, giving MacFarlane a $2 million per-season contract.[14]
"I was doing this character in a stage show, so I brought that over, which was very slow... that was based on my cousin in Long Island and Seth said that 'It would be a four hour show if you talked at that pace so could you make it quicker and raise it?'.
"Over the years you can notice that it started lower and slower and it's gotten higher and higher and quicker and quicker."
Alex Borstein, on Lois Griffin's Origins, Interview with IGN.[19]
At the time when Family Guy was being developed, Borstein was working in the sketch comedy, MADtv.[19] She was asked to audition by a member of the MADtv staff who was helping MacFarlane develop the show. She had not met MacFarlane or seen any artwork and said it was "really sight unseen".[19][20] At the time, she was doing a stage show in Los Angeles, in which she played a redhead mother, whose voice she had based on one of her cousins from Long Island, New York.[18][20] She took the voice of the character to the set and use it for Lois. The voice was originally slower, when MacFarlane heard it, he asked her to make it faster and higher. Borstein has noted that the voice of Lois has been changing from the slower original voice to the quicker up tempo voice of the present episodes.[19]
There have been rare occasions where Borstein does not voice Lois, such as in the episode "Road to the Multiverse", where Lois is not voiced by Borstein in a scene and instead was voiced by Japanese actress Kei Ogawa, who was required for a scene where everything in the world was Japanese (she also did the voice of Meg for the scene).[21]
Personality
Lois's personality has evolved throughout the episodes. She is commonly the voice of reason to Peter's shenanigans, but in some episodes she can act darker than normal and sometimes shows a taste for sadomasochism. In the episode "The Son Also Draws", Lois had a gambling addiction when the family went to a Native Americancasino and lost the family car. In the episode "Model Misbehavior", Lois becomes a bulimic model. However, in "Sibling Rivalry", just the opposite happens where Lois gains a ton of weight after Peter has a vasectomy and loses his sex drive. After outgrowing Peter's size, she discovers she enjoys being fat, leading to a new sex life where she lets Peter force feed her junk food so she can continue to grow bigger and fatter. "Stuck Together, Torn Apart" shows Peter and Lois splitting up because of Peter's jealousy, only to discover that Lois has the same jealousy characteristic and the two decide to live together despite their mutually jealous nature.[22]
Sexuality
Several episodes have suggested that Lois is bisexual or, at least, bi-curious. In an interview, Borstein stated that Lois became "a little more snarky and sassy and sexual" since the first season to challenge "those sitcom rules that a woman is supposed to be a total wet blanket and not like sex and is no fun".[20] In the first straight-to-DVD feature, Stewie Griffin, The Untold Story, Lois also states, "women are such teases. That's why I went back to men." She reveals in "Partial Terms of Endearment" that she had a lesbian affair with Naomi while they were students at Salve Regina University, and she passionately kisses Meg's lesbian classmate Sarah in "Brian Sings and Swings". In the pilot episode for The Cleveland Show, she and Bonnie make out to fulfill Cleveland's, Peter's, Quagmire's and Brian's wish. In another Family Guy episode, Lois makes out with Meg's teenage boyfriend after Meg leaves the room only for Meg to return seconds later to find them on top of each other.
Reception
Commendations
Lois Griffin ranked number 12 spot on "IGN's Top 25 Family Guy Characters".[23] In "IGN's top 10 musical moments in Family Guy" ranked number three spot with the song, "This House Is Freakin' Sweet" from the episode, "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater", (season 2, 1999).[24] In "IGN's Family Guy: Top 10 Fights", Lois ranked on two places, in number seven and number 6 for Lois's fight with Stewie in "Lois Kills Stewie" and in the Griffin Family Fight from "Barely Legal", respectively.[25]
Lois is also featured on the Family Guy: Live in Vegas CD,[31] and plays a significant part in Family Guy Video Game!, the first Family Guy video game, which was released by 2K Games in 2006.[32] Borstein recorded exclusive material of Lois for a 2007 pinball machine of the show by Stern Pinball.[33] In 2004, the first series of Family Guy toy figurines was released by Mezco Toyz, each member of the Griffin family had their own, except for Stewie, of whom two different figures were made.[34] Over the course of two years, four more series of toy figures have been released, with various forms of Peter.[35]
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