Death in the Family

On November 24th 2013, Brian the Dog was brutally and mercilessly run over by an unknown driver in one of “Family Guy’s” most shocking episodes, leading to a large, anger filled outcry by the show’s fans to creator Seth MacFarlane through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and online petitions to bring the character back.

I was also shocked and angered towards Macfarlane for making this drastic decision to take out one of his original characters for just another joke, in the form of a new dog called Vinnie voiced by Tony Sirico from “The Sopranos”. The new character has even replaced Brian in the opening of the series.

But why am I so upset about a cartoon character dying? It’s just a cartoon, right? This got me thinking about all the other cartoon characters I have seen die on-screen over the years.

In 2003 when I was 11 years old, I was given a DVD of “Transformers: The Movie”, the first and only Transformers animated movie that came out in 1989. In the mid-climax of the film, Optimus Prime finally defeats his arch-nemesis Megatron, leaving the two both fatally injured. After being carried away to safety, Optimus Prime passes on The Matrix of Leadership to a new Autobot called Ultra Magnus and in his last breath utters the words “Till All Are One”. His once colourful red and blue body fades to a dark grey and his blue, glowing eyes blink out.

And what was the purpose of killing off my favourite Transformer?! For brand new toys! For money! Hasbro had assassinated their most popular franchise, just to collect the bounty on its head.

In April 2000, I forced my mother to take me to see “Pokémon: The First Movie” in the cinema. In the film, two powerful Pokémon called Mewtwo and Mew fight and Ash Ketchum, who is trying to stop the fighting, gets caught in the middle of an energy blast by the two Pokémon and is turned to stone. The cinema was in complete silence as Ash’s Pikachu starts crying and as I looked up to my mother in complete shock, I saw that my mother was in tears. I shouted out “Why are you crying mum? It’s only a cartoon!”

Even at 8 years old, I could understand that Ash wouldn’t stay dead and would be brought back to life as he is the show’s main character and shortly after his death in the movie, he is brought back to life by the Pokémon’s tears by some unexplained reason. The same was for Optimus Prime, who was brought back a few years after his death by the power of fan-demand.

And the same fan-demand was used to try and bring back Brian after his death, with an online petition created with over 120,000 signatures before it was closed.

The reason that so many people were upset about the death of Brian was because we each had a connection to him, a history with him as we watched him age and mature. The same can be said for Optimus Prime and even Ash Ketchum.

Brian began as a character of one-liners of jokes on dog behaviour, the consumption of alcohol and that he was smarter than his owner, but later became a character that was the source for some of the deep, intellectual discussions the series offered the causal, TV watching audience.

And that audience wants to know why he had to die. To try out new material? To boost ratings of the show? To shock their audience to show that they are able to change up their regular story-lines?

Oh…never mind then.

I’m in grief and this was my rant.