Reception
In its original American broadcast, "The Man with Two Brians" was watched by 8.60 million households according to the Nielsen ratings. The episode acquired a 4.3 rating in the 18–49 demographic, and was the most-watched show in the Animation Domination block that night. Family Guy finished fourth in its timeslot, after NBC's Sunday Night Football, ABC's Desperate Housewives and CBS's The Amazing Race.
The episode received generally favorable reviews from television sources and critics. Ahsan Haque of IGN gave the episode 7.5/10 and said: "While it featured more than a couple of genuinely unfunny ideas, this episode succeeds for the most part. While this episode definitely won't make anyone's top ten list of great Family Guy, there was a much better balance between random humor and storytelling in this outing". Genevieve Koski of The A.V. Club gave the episode an A-, and said that Family Guy "started things out on the wrong foot with an oh-so-relevant Jackass storyline. Most of the Jackass stuff was way too stale–Peter jackknifing Quagmire into the crate of bees notwithstanding–but thankfully it was just setup for a far superior storyline, the introduction of a younger 'New Brian'".
Robin Pierson of The TV Critic was more critical about the episode, and gave it 32/100 and said: "As usual the problem with this episode is that there is no point to it. some needless jokes but others which were bearable and a logical enough story even though it addressed nothing.
Read more about this topic: The Man With Two Brians
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)