“I don't think any word can explain a man's life,” says one of the searchers through the warehouse of treasures left behind by Glenn Quagmire. Then we get the famous series of shots leading to the closeup of the word “Giggity” on a sled that has been tossed into a furnace, its paint curling in the flames. We remember that this was Quagmire's childhood sled, taken from him as he was torn from his family and sent east to boarding school.
Giggity is the emblem of the security, hope and innocence of childhood, which a man can spend his life seeking to regain. It is the green light at the end of Gatsby's pier; the leopard atop Kilimanjaro, seeking nobody knows what; the bone tossed into the air in “2001.” It is that yearning after transience that adults learn to suppress. “Maybe Giggity was something he couldn't get, or something he lost,” says Thompson, the reporter assigned to the puzzle of Quag's dying word. “Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything.” True, it explains nothing, but it is remarkably satisfactory as a demonstration that nothing can be explained. “Family Guy” likes playful paradoxes like that. Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery.