In news that sent waves
of sadness and horror throughout the, some say too-attached, fans of Family
Guy, Brian Griffin was killed off in a recent episode.
And not killed in
the usual way a cartoon kills someone and then brings them back to life by the
end of the episode. Killed killed. Like properly dead. People were devastated,
even here in the UK where we technically shouldn’t know about it yet, as this
happened during season twelve and we’re still only airing season eleven. But
given that a) we stream everything 100% legally (or the opposite) online, and
b) the clip obviously went viral, this is already old news even here.
But new news now breaking; Brian is coming back (allegedly).
He’s rumoured to be in the Christmas episode! And likely as the result of a
hair-brained yet somehow brilliantly effective plan of Stewie’s. So not even in
an exciting or original way; just in the same way most crazy stunts in the show
involving Brian happen.
This has of course resulted in a backlash of people slamming
the makers of Family Guy as this isn’t the huge game-changing stunt we thought
it would be. By bringing Brian back, they’ve reduced the greatness and
originality of that concept right down to a trick publicity stunt. We don’t
want that, that’s all anyone does anymore; we want something actually
revolutionary like killing Brian off for good would have been.
The execution could of course be amusing, although I imagine
the episode’s main jokes will involve tension between Brian and the new family
dog Vinnie. And that’s unlikely to play out any differently than the two or
three other times they’ve introduced a new dog to the Griffin household. So it
will probably be a fairly lacklustre episode, except of course for the joy that
Brian’s return will bring.
There is actually speculation that this resurrection is a
result of fan petitions, as nothing is allowed to change on tv anymore unless a
petition was involved (see: Katie Hopkins on ITV). But given the timing, this
does seem an awful lot more like this was the plan all along. And whilst it’s
genius in that it’s got them tons of press, not all of it is positive press.
Although they are in their twelfth season now, I suppose they must be starting
to run out of good ideas by now.
Ari Carrington
