‘Family Guy’ winter finale: Seth MacFarlane explains controversial Brian decision

Now that the cat (or we suppose, the dog) is finally out of the bag when it comes to what happened on Sunday night’s new episode of “Family Guy,” Seth MacFarlane has finally made the decision to actually explain what was going on when it comes to Brian this whole time. The reason that he never addressed the character’s death a few weeks back was because he didn’t want to tip his hat one way or another as to what was happening with the character. Not only that, but he did not want to make anyone even more angry than they already were after seeing what happened.

But after Brian was revived during Sunday’s episode, the show creator and voice of the character took to his Twitter account, and explained that there actually was a moral message to be found in his decision to bring the man back:

“And thus endeth our warm, fuzzy holiday lesson: Never take those you love for granted, for they can be gone in a flash … I mean, you didn’t really think we’d kill off Brian, did you?  Jesus, we’d have to be f***ing high.

“Oh and hey… thanks for caring so much about the canine Griffin. He is overcome with gratitude.” 

So from here on out, it will be business as usual at “Family Guy,” and it is easy to say right now that this entire plan was a complete and utter success. More people cared about this show than ever before during the period in which Brian is dead, and they made sure that Seth and everyone else associated with the show heard about it. For them, that has to be a victory almost as much as anything else is having that sort of extra validation that your creation is loved and cared for.

But, from a business standpoint, this was a publicity decision … and a pretty darn awesome one at that.

To read our full take on Brian’s return to “Family Guy,” be sure to click here. We’ll have more reaction from this moment as it comes out.

Photo: Fox