Life of Brian + Christmas Guy
Quite possibly one of the most malicious things Family Guy’s done to their viewers.
Backstory
Family Guy, once a well beloved cartoon that achieved popularity through the help of DVD sales and Adult Swim, suffered a severe drop in quality that started in the fifth season with questionable episodes featuring “jokes” used to fill up the run time or resorting to Conway Twitty. The drop went so steep that eventually seven seasons later, Family Guy was so desperate for viewers that they decided to announce that a character would be killed off. Early on into the season, that character turned out to be none other than Brian Griffin, which infuriated fanatics, and cries for bringing Brian back were all over. However by the end it was nothing less than a pathetic trick to gain ratings and showcase that the writers were willing to lie to their viewers. This scheme caused even more viewers to ditch Quahog and find something else to fill the time.
Furthermore, Brian’s characteristics got even worse no thanks to Brian’s a Bad Father and Herpe the Love Sore.
Story
After Stewie destroys his time machine due to getting in a lot trouble one too many times, Brian is murdered by a reckless driver. Rather than accept that fact that Brian will never come back, Stewie takes matters into his own hands during Christmas.
Random Opinions
Initially I was completely against killing of Brian. It was a bad move and given that Brian could’ve just be salvaged with better writing, the move comes off as being lazy.
Apparently the lesson was to not take things for granted (see twitter posts above). And this applies to these two episodes because… why?
Going back to the whole “someone will die and not come back” fiasco for the season, I believe the death of Peter’s mother must have filled that position. Otherwise, this whole BS was done to trick viewers into watching and wasting their time.
When this happened, I wasn’t at home but I read about it shortly afterwards and then watched the episodes for myself.
As of December 2025, I consider this two-part piece of shit to be the 3rd shittiest episode of the entire series. Fresh Heir BARELY outranks this one by a razor thin margin. Brian’s a Bad Father and A Fistful of Meg are nearly just as bad as this.
Scorecard
| Visuals | Writing | Tolerance | Audio | Characters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rancid (1/10) | Didn’t Try (0/10) | Didn’t Try (0/10) | Rancid (1/10) | Rancid (1/10) |
| Disgusting imagery when Brian is near death. | Killing off a character and then throwing in a newer and shittier character is a pathetic attempt at writing. | Let’s start by killing a character off for no reason. Then let’s bring him back, and make him induce even more hatred. Great job writers. Great fucking job. | Not going to go into detail on how bad Vinny is of a character. | Vinny is as flat as Des Moines. Stewie seems to be the only one with a fucking brain. |
Rating: 3/50 – Didn’t Try (0.5/10)
A horrible ratings trap that even made SpongeBob You’re Fired look tolerable. If it weren’t for Fresh Heir, I would’ve ranked this the worst of the season. This is the third worst episode of the entire series – yes even worse than Brian’s a Bad Father and You Can’t Handle the Booth.
Both episodes are rated the same.
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