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Family Guy is one of the longest running animated shows in history. Along the likes of The Simpsons and South Park, it seems Family Guy is going to be a mainstay for many years to come. But throughout Family Guy's historic run, there have been a fair share of great episodes, and terrible episodes. We take a look at one of the all time worst episodes of Family Guy.
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I can't believe he's been gone a whole month
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Can we at least get rid of the doggy door so Chris doesn't keep getting stuck in it? Every day I get a little further in
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Any television show that manages to last 10 seasons or more has to have both a loyal fan base and a strong set of characters
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But what tends to happen over time as these shows go on and on
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is writers lose sight of what made those characters beloved in the first place
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This tends to culminate in an episode that so completely and utterly misses the mark
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that it becomes clear that the show has hit a point of no return
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For the long-running animated series Family Guy, that episode is season 12, episode 6, The Life of Brian
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On IMDb, The Life of Brian is one of the lowest-ranked episodes
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of the entirety of Family Guy's run. It's difficult to say if that ranking is simply because fans disliked
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the creative choice to kill off Brian, or if they genuinely believe it was a bad episode
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Damn it, Brian, you can't die! We were gonna do so many things together! Following the episode's airing, a Change.org petition launched and quickly gained thousands
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of signatures, begging Seth MacFarlane to bring back Brian. But when you rewatch the episode, the major flaws in its structure and storytelling become clear
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In order to truly understand why the life of Brian is a perfect illustration of the worst
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of Family Guy, it's important to look back on where the series began. Initially airing in 1999 on Fox, it'd be easy to write off Family Guy as a clone of Fox's
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other beloved animated family sitcom, The Simpsons. What set Family Guy apart was its willingness
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to embrace absurdism with its reality-breaking cutaway gags that would become a staple of the series
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I'm the king of the world! Where the show begins to decline can be charted
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all the way back to its fourth season following its initial cancellation
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Everybody, I got bad news. We've been canceled. However, the series would gain new life
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in reruns on Adult Swim and through DVD sales. This groundswell of support would be enough for
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Fox to bring the show back in 2004 This was unheard of for the time period Today with such a gluttony of streaming services constantly looking for content canceled TV shows are often given at least one second chance at life But in 2004
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this was a pretty unprecedented moment, especially since that renewal would lead to an 18-year run
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of the show. Not only did Family Guy not die, it now seemed to be immortal. The excitement over the
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show's return was short-lived. The resurrected version of the show had started to rely more and
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more on the show's pop culture references and cutaway gags. There it is, boys, the fountain
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of youth, just like I told you. The characters began to feel more like joke delivery machines
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rather than well-rounded characters who the audience would enjoy spending time with each week
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However, this wasn't always the case with the show. Although Family Guy always had a bit of a
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more cynical streak when compared to shows like The Simpsons or King of the Hill, there was some
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semblance of heart. The characters had personalities that felt authentic despite being in such a cartoony world
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This is perhaps best illustrated by the season three episode, Brian Wallows and Peter Swallows
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Now, despite the crass title, it's a genuinely moving episode that succeeds in many of the
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ways the life of Brian fails. The episode follows Brian as he forms a bond with an elderly opera singer named Pearl Burton
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who found fame doing commercial jingles, but never found the artistic fulfillment she truly desired
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Brian finds in Pearl a fellow appreciator of the arts, and he yearns to show her the world she's missed out on during her years as a recluse
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Following A Night on the Town, Pearl is hit by a truck and dies, but not before Brian takes her on a virtual simulation of the life they could have led together
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The episode is poignant and bittersweet, and deliberate or not, feels like an homage to the old crooner singers that Seth MacFarlane clearly has a soft spot for
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Even the episode's B plot about baby birds and Peter's beard pairs perfectly with Brian's journey of love gained and lost
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This episode is a perfect encapsulation of the type of emotional journey that life of Brian fails
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to truly evoke in the audience. It's impossible to imagine Family Guy
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ever being able to recapture that kind of emotional weight in its current form And life of Brian is the evidence Right from the start the episode feels disorienting as if we watching the second part of a two episode We open on Brian and Stewie fleeing from a group
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of Native Americans after apparently traveling back in time to Jamestown and altering history by giving modern day weaponry
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to the Native Americans to fight the colonizing Europeans. It's a truly baffling choice to open this episode
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about Brian's death and its impact on the family with this complete non sequitur of a plot line
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that wastes nearly 10 minutes of a 28-minute episode. Once it's made clear that the show uses this episode
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to kill off Brian, it feels like an even greater waste of time
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The haphazard nature of this episode continues when Stewie decides to destroy his time machine
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in a junkyard. While there, Brian finds an old street hockey goal and encourages Stewie to play a game with him
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During their game, Brian is abruptly struck by a car and killed. One could argue the structure of this episode
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is meant to startle the viewer by making them think they were in for another run-of-the-mill Family Guy episode. But by wasting the already
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brief runtime of the show, it leaves the drama of the moment completely hollow. Brian's death
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feels more like a rushed attempt to write an actor out of a show who decided not to renew their
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contract, rather than a genuine emotional goodbye to a beloved character. To make matters worse
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the third act of the episode focuses on the family trying to move on by getting a new dog
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Vinny. While the character is amusing, it's again strange to immediately try and replace
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the character of Brian within the same episode. The episode ends with a note that seems to suggest
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Vinny will be helping Stewie to move on after the loss of his friend, but sincerity has been so far
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removed from the Family Guy formula at this point, it's hard to genuinely feel for the pathos of the
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characters that the writers are trying to present to the viewer. In an interview about the episode with E!
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writer Steve Callahan discussed the decision to kill off Brian, stating, this was an idea that
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got pitched in the writers room, and it sort of caught fire. And we thought it could be a fun way to shake things up Now one has to wonder how serious Callahan was in that moment considering that Brian would return in episode eight meaning he only truly absent for one whole episode Considering the lengthy turnaround time
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it takes to produce an animated episode of television like Family Guy, it's clear that it was always
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the plan to take Brian off the board, only for the briefest periods of time
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This makes his death feel all the more like a calculated move to get people talking about the show
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again in its 12th season, or potentially a plot line the writers felt they wanted to try
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but didn't feel confident enough to fully commit to. Regardless of the reason, the death of Brian
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and his near immediate return illustrates one of the pitfalls of long-form storytelling
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When a series goes on for so long, it takes more and more desperate, shocking moves
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to keep viewers engaged and talking. And what better way to shock than with the surprise death
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of a beloved character? This is a tactic superhero comic books have been using for years
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And much like when it happens in comics, it's always very obvious when the writers don't intend for it to be permanent
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Death is a powerful storytelling tool, but when the writers use it for arbitrary shock value
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it not only loses its impact, but also betrays your audience. They'll begin to question why they've invested their love into a show
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if the writers treat the characters so carelessly. What's most frustrating about this episode is that
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the idea to kill off Brian could have worked if it had been a worthy enough send-off to this beloved character
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Despite its best attempts, Family Guy is no longer a series capable of that type of emotional
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storytelling. The life of Brian is the worst of the series, not because the bad creative decision
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but because it is a microcosm of all the ways Family Guy has lost its way as a show
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The irony of all this is that the previously mentioned episode, Brian Wallows, Peter Swallows
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is about learning to let go. Both Brian and Peter have to accept the impermanence of life
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and that the things we love will eventually, in one form or another, leave us
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Perhaps this was a lesson fans should have learned at the cancellation of Family Guy all the way back in season 3
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It's perhaps better to have loved a show and lost it too soon than to watch it turn into something you can no longer enjoy
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