5. Brian Writes A Bestseller
After the complete failure of his novel, which had been a running joke for some time, Brian sells out and cynically writes some trashy self-help advice, compelled by his claim that anyone can write the sort of paint-by-numbers garbage that makes it to the top of the bestsellers lists. Brian Writes a Bestseller focuses more on the negative side to his character, the self-involved faux-intellectual with a dangerous ego who appears when the cook becomes legitimately successful. His book: "Wish It, Want It, Do It" was thrown together in three hours to make a point about how easy it is to write hugely successful self-help advice titles, but after it becomes successful, with the help of Stewie's power agent, Brian believes his own hype. The best part of the narrative is the crushing realisation that he has sold out big time that comes at the climax of the episode: Brian is mortified to realise that he has abandoned his beliefs and to top it all off his novel is torn apart on Real Time with Bill Maher. This humbles him again and closes an arc that genuinely needed to be explored. All Brian has wanted for years was to be a successful author, convincing himself to get there by any means in this episode he realised that to do so was to compromise everything he stands for.