Brian Griffin - Role in Family Guy

Role in Family Guy

Brian is a white-furred anthropomorphic dog. He can talk, generally walks on his hind legs (using his front legs as arms), has opposable thumbs, drives a Toyota Prius, and often acts more rationally than many of the other characters in the series. He is the pet dog and friend of the Griffin family.

Brian has a particularly close friendship with Stewie, and the show's sub-plots normally center around them. They are occasionally at the centre of the plot (for instance in the Road to... episodes). Brian is fond of dry martinis and was seen to have some issues in various episodes when he is told or forced to stop drinking. He is the son of Coco and Biscuit, who are normal dogs, though Brian's human attributes have been present since he was a puppy. He is also an Iraq War veteran because Stewie signed him up for the Army in "Saving Private Brian". Brian is an aspiring but mediocre writer – this is said to be a reference to Snoopy from Peanuts. He also has a (human) son named Dylan, who is also a regular marijuana smoker. Brian manages to turn Dylan's life around, from a violent, uneducated teenager, to a well-mannered friendly young man. Brian is unemployed but he is often seen writing various novels, screenplays or essays. In the episode "Play it Again, Brian", Brian won an award for an essay he wrote, though he later admits that he plagiarized the piece.

In the episode "420", Brian finally publishes his novel Faster Than the Speed of Love, and the novel is shipped, but it is critically panned and does not sell a single copy. In the episode "Dog Gone", he receives an invitation (from the Rhode Island Society for Special Literary Excellence) to an award ceremony celebrating his novel. Brian, convinced that he is a great writer, attempts to gain the family's interest in this piece of news but fails to do so. Once he arrives at the "award ceremony", however, he discovers that he has misunderstood the meaning of the word "special." Later in the episode "Brian Griffin's House of Payne", he writes a television script entitled "What I Learned on Jefferson Street", and it was shown to a TV network who picked it up after reading it. Finally in the episode "Brian Writes a Bestseller", Brian writes a bestselling self-help book, Wish It, Want It, Do It, which he wrote in a few hours. The book is an immediate success, but Brian lets the fame go to his head. He eventually causes the downfall of his book's popularity, and things go back to normal. And it is mentioned again to get a girl in Yug Ylimaf.

Family Guy uses a floating timeline in which the characters do not age much, so the show is always assumed to be set in the current year. However, several of the characters, such as Meg Griffin, have aged two to three years since the show's pilot episode, while others, such as Stewie and Brian, have remained the same age. In several episodes, events have been linked to specific times, although this timeline has been contradicted in subsequent episodes. An example of this is when in "Brian: Portrait of a Dog", Peter is shown in a flashback finding a fully grown Brian as a stray. However, in "The Man with Two Brians", Brian tries to regain attention from the Griffin family by showing them home videos of him as a puppy.