I’m going to assume everyone knows the premise of the adult cartoon “Family Guy”, but just-in-case the basic idea is a series of random events occurring to Peter, his wife Lois, their teenage son Chris, their emotionally abused daughter Meg, their British-accented baby Stewie, and their pretentious talking dog Brian. It’s been on for years, I promise you. Most of the characters are voiced by creator Seth McFarlane so I’m not going to give you the whole cast list. You can look it on imdb.com if you’re curious.
“Brian Writes a Bestseller” comes from season 9 (see I told you it’s been on for a long time). An ongoing theme has been Brian the dog wanting to be a professional writer. The episode opens with his only published work, a drama with a plot suspiciously similar to the film Iron Eagle entitled Faster Than the Speed of Love, being sent to him. His publisher has given up on the novel and mailed 300 boxes worth of copies to the author. The joke about his failure goes a step further when Stewie realizes the copies of the book are packaged within shredded additional copies of the same book. At least, Brian declares defeat and swears he will give up writing.
First of all - ouch! What kind of contract did he have with this publisher? I know it was all a gag for opening of the episode, but. . . oh man. Just ouch.
In a fit of rage, Brian complains how all of the “crap” on the bestseller list is currently self-help fodder that he could churn out in three hours of writing time. Stewie (who I would like to remind you is a devious baby with a thick U.K. accent and several doomsday devices in his toy box) happily encourages Brain to try this writing exercise. Brian finishes Wish It, Want It, Do It in 3 hours and 27 minutes, referring to it as a “big steaming pile of book”.
Off topic, but I have referred to some of my books in their first draft phase with similar monikers. There’s one my boyfriend and I still call “the gilded turd” because upon first edit I discovered it wasn’t AS BAD as I originally thought - but still not great. He’s never actually read it. He just calls it that based on my own self-criticism and complaining. . . and I never told him the real title.
In case you can’t tell from the episode title, Wish It, Want It, Do It becomes an immediate success after it’s published by Penguin (for you book nerds, there’s a sex joke about the Big Five company about 4 minutes into the episode then again right before the 11 minute mark). Brian hires Stewie to be his overzealous publicist. It takes no time for Brian to become a nightmare celebrity who takes out all of his aggression on Stewie. He also tries to use his fame to hit on women, but mostly it creeps them out. Yes, human women. The dog dates human women - mostly blondes. Don’t. . . don’t think about that one too hard. Either way, you get where this episode is going. Let’s move on.
Personally, I’ve yet to have the opportunity to become a garbage human being thanks to fame, but I can relate to the idea of writing to a trend in hopes of building a name in the business. This concept is something all established authors tell you not to do, but everyone tries it anyway. I’ve know people who have tried to ride the vampire trend, the werewolf trend, the erotica trend, the historical romance trend, etc. What happens most times, is the writer gets bored because it’s not the story he or she wants to be working. Now, if it’s something that can be churned out in 3 an a half hours and published without editing and published without edits, that’s different. But that’s also why “Family Guy” is a cartoon.
