Family Guy: The Former Life of Brian

After tracking down a former girlfriend, Brian's surprised to find out that he's a father to a teenage boy named Dylan. Never mind that Brian's a dog, and hasn't actually been alive for that many years - that's not the point. The episode focuses on Dylan moving into the Griffin home and Brian's parenting skills being tested.

Dylan's a rebellious teenager who's nearly impossible to handle. He violently threatens the entire household, and even beats up the evil monkey that lives in Chris' closet. Perhaps the funniest and cruelest of his atrocities against the Griffin family involved tying up Meg in the basement and forcing her to watch lesser known Monty Python sketches, to which Meg replies, "I'm a girl! I don't even like the good Monty Python sketches!" In one of the better sight gags of the episode, Peter's response to getting an unwanted Mohawk hairdo from Dylan was to reveal that he's full of Play-Doh, and promptly re-grows his hair.

It wasn't until the unlikely father-son duo shared some pot that they finally bond with a heartfelt connection. In typical Family Guy manner, this was all quite tongue-in-cheek and trumpeted with a naked Stewie cheering them on with a Jerry Springer reference.

After that point, Brian suddenly transforms into the type of annoyingly overprotective parent that far too few of us try to avoid turning into. While Brian's sharing a drink with Peter and friends, he snaps at Quagmire about not understanding what it's like to be a parent until you have a kid of your own. This prompts Quagmire and the others to come up with unlikely harmful scenarios involving Dylan, upsetting the dog more and more.

The last straw with the Griffins was when Brian confronts Lois for serving Dylan a sandwich made with white bread. He wanted Dylan to be served something healthier, and Lois' following tirade is bound to make even the most jaded viewer smirk. Peter decides to take matters in his own hands and brings Tracy back and tries to convince her to take her son back.

Dylan's transformation to a respectable, caring do-gooder seems just as extreme as his pre-joint-sharing with dog-father past, but it does lead to the teen wanting to go back to his mother and try to transform her life the way Brian transformed his.

Family Guy episodes are better served when trying to tell a cohesive story and "The Former Life of Brian" is a great example of this. Not all of the random manatee jokes were hits, but the storyline makes up for it, and forces one to focus on that and not the barrage of cultural references. The Cocoa Puffs and cut-out folk art jokes bombed, but there were some amusing ones such as the The Wizard of Oz goodbyes. However, all of this takes a backseat to the crux of the episode: Brian fathered a human child! Where else but on Family Guy could I see something like that happen, and actually feel plausible?