Review: Family Guy “Who’s Brian Now?”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

A microchip in Brian reveals that he once lived with another family known as the Hendersons. This shocking truth about Brian’s past makes his life with the Griffins much more difficult. After Brian decided to move back in with the Hendersons, the Griffins find out how much they miss him.

Our Take:

Brian has been a loyal part of the Griffin family for over 20 years. So it seems surprising that they’re not the first and only family that he lives with. Yeah, it turns out that Brian belonged to another family way before he met the Griffins. It’s about time we got something interesting this season.

The main story didn’t kick off right away as it spent the first seven minutes showcasing Peter’s hair dilemma. He refused to get one because his usual barber Jerry passed away recently. After avoiding the new barber by traveling to space with his imagination rocket, he lets his hair grow out, which turned out to be alive. It ended with Peter cutting the hair creature off his head and let it live in the garage. The creature was never brought up again for the rest of the episode. That segment didn’t last very long and felt more like an unnecessary addition to the episode’s 30-minute runtime. While it was pretty amusing to see Peter get stuck in space for three weeks thanks to his imagination, the whole hair thing might’ve worked best as an episode’s central plot.

Aside from the whole hair-raising situation, the episode, in general, was a respectable improvement over the previous two episodes. It offered some pretty decent jokes, such as Peter’s imagination rocket and Stewie and Chris’ “bonding time” that referenced Saturday Night Live. It also had a suitable amount of heart that represented how much Brian meant to the Griffins. Those moments were brief, but I would gladly take them over Lois attempting to win “Customer of the Week” any day.

Part of the episode’s heart came from Brian when he decided to live with the Hendersons due to him noticing how dumb the Griffins can be. He thought that living with the Hendersons will be better because of them being intelligent and wealthy. However, he later found out that they’re treating him like an ordinary pet, which made him feel uncomfortable. Brian soon concluded that when he’s with the Griffins, he’s treated like a person instead of a regular dog. It’s a Family Guy way of saying, “be with the family who treats you right.”

This was one of the better episodes of the show’s nineteenth season so far. Sure, it still has some wacky and out-of-place moments that I’ve come to expect. However, it never lost sight of giving Brian some proper and exciting development, unlike what it did to Lois a couple of weeks ago.