Brian & Stewie

If you're expecting a typical Family Guy episode you will be disappointed. You won't get much of the humour that the show has gotten us used to. However, if you have no expectations and watch this episode open-mindedly, you will be surprised.

It's one of my favourite Family Guy episodes ever, because of the different ranges of depth it indulges in. We get to know both characters in a very deep and intimate way, as if they were absolutely real people with real-life troubles and concerns. The humour is still there, and it's funny as always, but the episode is not meant to be your typical FG episode; it goes beyond that and shows us what these two characters (and people in general) are really made of.

Most people have already explained why this episode is already great, but the bond between brian and stewie and the seriousness of this episode, shows that behind all the jokes and laughs theres something more. this episode has my respect and the subject of depression. (10/10)

After watching this episode for the first time I was a bit shocked. I have watched Family Guy since it's very first season and I have to say this episode is my all time favorite. When I saw that most of the reviews the episode had were unfavorable, I knew people who watched it didn't seem to understand the seriousness of this episode. The episode wasn't created for the comedic entertainment of the dedicated Family Guy fans. It was a way to show the underlying issues of hints in the smaller jokes in older episodes. Seth MacFarlane wrote an episode to show how manipulative Stewie Griffin really is, and it also shows that Brain's depression is something more real than any of the viewers had expected, with previous episodes even cracking jokes about the issues Brian has with his life. The seriousness of this episode gives it a new feel, and it's much more real then the corny jokes and small puns in any other episode. People just weren't ready for it.

Family Guy in the last two years has really been hit or miss. This year, there seems to be even more misses than hits, but one thing stands through all of it, and that is that Family Guy is nothing but a goofy gag show. From the beginning Family Guy was this way, though during the first few seasons it would occasionally show a little bit of heart, which seemed to be completely missing in recent episodes. This episode completely goes against the normal Family Guy format, and also shows some emotional depth. It's so different than every other episode, and though not the funniest, still managed to be a real classic.

Brian and Stewie are locked in a bank vault overnight and have to put up with each other for this time. During the duration of the night, Brian does a disgusting deed for Stewie, pierces his ear, they both get drunk and they learn a lot about each other. No cutaways at all this episode, and only two characters, in one setting, giving us a more intimate setting, and more depth to the characters.

It was nice to stop on a couple characters and just linger on them. This show so rarely does that. It's normally one joke after another, with fart jokes, cutaways and Meg hate jokes peppered throughout each episode. Lingering on these two characters gave us an interesting character study, and despite that very little happened, we got to learn a lot more about two of Family Guy's most popular characters. And it's not like the episode isn't funny. It's funny, it just doesn't rely on the usual celebrity cut away references, so it isn't quite as random. It's a more focused episode on the relationship between these two characters. And actually, the end of the episode was really sweet and nice, and was probably the last episode of Family Guy to actually show genuine emotion since season 3's "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows".

Overall, this is one of the deepest episodes of Family Guy, and despite that it had to get rid of it's usual zaniness to achieve it, this was still a triumph and one of Family Guy's best episodes.

My rating: **** out of ****. 35 mins.

This is the first time I have ever reviewed anything on any site. I know it's random, but I have to say something about not only the episode but the bizarre response from some people. Then I will get off my soapbox.

Not liking the episode is one thing. Dismissing it entirely because it goes against the wave of the very controversial and often criticized style of a typical "Family Guy" episode makes no sense to me. Nearly every negative review says the same things. "Where's the cutaway gags?" "It didn't make me laugh once!" Answers: "They aren't there" and "It wasn't trying to." Okay, so maybe the momentary way over-the-top gross-out humor and drunk Stewie gags were meant to elicit laughs, and I'll admit that on the former it failed to do so. But I can forgive it. I loved this episode. It is the first time "Family Guy" has really challenged viewers intellectually and spiritually. It is by far the darkest and most existential of any episode. It is the first time that you could actually close-read an episode of it (Brian reading David Copperfield to Stewie as a bedtime story is completely loaded with meaning, FWIW.) So yeah, feel free to expect one thing from "Family Guy" and be disappointed if you are not satisfied with the radical shift in tone. But it's perplexing to see someone say "It didn't make me laugh!" or "There were no non-sequiturs!" Those points are not inherent demerits. For one episode, just one, they were kind of the point.