If you are one of the remaining three people in America who still watches “Family Guy,” then you know that one of the best characters on the long-running — if barely tolerable — series was killed off during Sunday night’s episode.
Brian, the Griffin’s sophisticated, womanizing pet dog, got hit by a car and died. Like, actually died — not dream-sequence died or Kenny from “South Park” died.
Brian has been one of the best characters during “Family Guy’s” 11 seasons and one of the only good reasons to still watch Seth MacFarlane’s series, which was arguably only groundbreaking and hilarious during its first three seasons. [Author’s note: A few years ago, I was working as a hostess at a restaurant in Boston when Seth MacFarlane came in one night when he was in town filming that awful movie “Ted.” He stepped on my foot as I walked him to his table because he was in SUCH a big hurry get to his table at the back of the restaurant so that other patrons wouldn’t recognize his stupid face and he did not apologize, so I may still harbor residual anger and feelings of bias towards his unfunny show due to this incident.]
Executive producer Steve Callahan told E! News why the writers decided to kill off Brian.
“Well, this was an idea that 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,” Callahan explained. “As soon as this idea came up, we started talking about what the next couple episodes could be and we got very excited about the way this change will affect the family dynamics and the characters.”
Translation: “We really needed to shake something up so people would start talking about our relatively crappy TV show again.”
The Griffins even got a new dog, voiced by “The Sopranos” Tony Sirico at the end of the episode, meaning that Brian is likely never coming back.
We will remember you, Brian.