From the kitchen, Lois sighed. The pearl necklace rattled. In HD, it sounded like a warning bell.

"Hey," the live-action Peter said, his voice a gravelly, real-world rasp. "You. The guy with the 4K subscription. Yeah, you. Stop zooming in on my pores."

On the TV, the animation style glitched. Stewie, rendered in stunning, terrifying photorealism for a single frame, looked directly at the audience. His head tilted, a tiny, menacing smile playing on his all-too-human lips.

The loading screen hung there for a beat too long, the tiny white circle spinning like a lazy dog chasing its tail. Then, with a crisp click that echoed in the dimly lit man-cave, the picture snapped into razor-sharp focus.

Real Peter choked on his popcorn. "Lois! He can see me!"

"HD," Peter Griffin whispered, clutching the remote like a holy relic. "It's… beautiful."

For the first time, Peter could see the individual brushstrokes of sweat on Chris's acne. He could count the translucent feathers on Brian's shedding tail. It was too much. It was perfect.

He missed standard def. He missed the blur. He missed not knowing that the other side could look back.