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Brian is Dead. ZOMG!!! SPOILERZ!!!!
Yep, we’re even chiming in on this. A controversial episode of Family Guy kills off beloved character Brian Griffin. Fans are outraged and have started petitions demanding the character be returned.
In this, a very special Animation Aficionados, we discuss other famous on-screen deaths, including some from past episodes of Family Guy.
Note to Family Guy producers: These are NOT facial expressions!
Gee, I wonder if this cut-away gag is going to tie into the upcoming Christmas episode. Derp.
I’ll give it about two or three episodes, til Brian come back and the new dog go to the pound. They might even make a spin off with the ghost of Brain LOL! It funny that they choice to kill Brian with a car, that was the same way his human self gone out
The episode didn’t make me feel anything, it just was another episode of Family Guy. I do feel bad for people who like Brian, they get no send off or anything.
Anyway, I agree that jurassic bark was 100x better then Brian so call death, it make me tear up even though I never have a pet before.
I am surprise no one bring up Kenny Dies
Great discussion, can’t wait for the next one
Well, I don’t think South Park ever expected us to get sad over Kenny’s death. Even when he “permanently died”, it wasn’t really treated as that big of a deal.
I’d like to say that it’s because Brian carries more weight than Kenny. I also think that when you kill a character off on every episode as a joke, killing him off once and for all just seems like the end of the joke, and so nobody really got upset about it.
Actually, I’m a little mad at myself for not bringing up the death of Chef, because that was a big deal at the time. Isaac Hayes left the show under less than optimal circumstances, and unfortunately he died before they could reconcile.
And some people I’ve talked to have said that Chef was a minor character, but I don’t think so. He had a pretty major impact in the early seasons, and they even did that Chef Aid thing with him.
And by the way, you’re right. Brian will be back in less than three weeks, and the whole show will be back to normal. I’m hopefully going to record something this weekend with Ben that explains my whole theory.
But the short of it is that the hinted Griffin family member death this year was not Brian (or Chris). It’s Vinny. Being a member of the family now, that means they can kill him off and bring in Brian as his “replacement”.
There’s even one very obvious clue to this in the episode itself, but I’ll get to that on the next recording.
My feelings about the Death of Brian Griffin are that the episode felt like a failed attempt to create one of the somber stories from an episode of Futurama. The episode was constructed extremely odd. It did not feel like they wanted to commit to a sad story as the episode began with a collection of piss poor Native American gags.
Many of the most memorable episodes of Futurama involved Frye’s nostalgia for the past. The seven leaf clover, fry’s dog, Frye wanting to spend more time with his mother. There were jokes in the episode but a viewer could tell early on that the show was going to tug on emotional strings.
Even if you ignore upcoming show titles and episode synopsis it is easy for people to assume this is a quickly reversible stunt because there was no weight put behind the death.
So my problem with this episode is that there is no weight behind the Brian death. It’s a 30 minute episode that will drastically change the dynamic of a show that has been on since the late 90s and they spend the first act in something so far removed from the rest of the episode that it feels tacked on. That leaves 20 minutes for the show to mourn, introduce a new character, and accept this replacement into the group.
It feels like the show is cheaply working the audience. They didn’t even spring for an hour long special.
Welp, Mr. Neil was 100% right
What else does the future of Family Guy have in store with us oh far-seer?