Line #26 Recap/FamilyGuyS9E6BrianWritesABestseller


1	'''Airdate:''' November 21, 2010
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3	[[quoteright:279:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brian_wries_abestseller_3215.jpg]]
4	[[caption-width-right:279:''"I have written a best-selling PHENOMENON!"'']]
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6	Receiving hundreds of packages in the mail containing unsold copies of his failed novel Faster Than the Speed of Love, Brian is convinced that he is not meant to be a writer and gives up. While reading The New York Times, Brian discovers that a self-help book is the highest-selling book on its bestseller list, and after some persuasion by Stewie, decides to write his own in order to prove that any idiot can write a self-help book. Finishing it in three hours and titling it ''Wish It, Want It, Do It'', Brian publishes the book, and it immediately becomes a commercial success. Brian decides to hire Stewie as his publicist when the book becomes popular. Going to dinner later that night with Stewie, Brian reflects on his newfound fame and becomes angered when Stewie botches his dinner reservations. Seeking to reconcile his relationship with Brian, he books him an appearance on the talk show ''Real Time with Bill Maher''.
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8	During the program, Stewie and Brian are informed that the show's topic and its guests have been changed two hours before the show begins. Becoming angered at Stewie once again, Brian fires him and continues on to the show's panel. While on the show, Bill Maher, along with other panelists Arianna Huffington and Dana Gould, begin to criticize Brian's book, stating that it does not meet the expectations of the public and is shallow, repetitive, and banal. Brian attempts to defend it, but ultimately confesses that he wrote the book in a day, believing that it would sell because it is "crap". By that point Maher loses what little respect he may have had for Brian, stating that a real writer would stand by their work despite what others think. Brian urinates himself on the set, prompting Maher to chase him off the program with a newspaper. Humiliated, Brian attempts to apologize to Stewie, but ends up blaming Stewie for everything and himself for expecting too much of him. Realizing that this is going to be as good an "apology" as it would get, Stewie bluntly tells him that he can't write.
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11	!!"Brian Writes A Bestseller" contains examples of ([[YMMV/FamilyGuyS9E6BrianWritesABestseller YMMV goes here]]):
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13	* AbhorrentAdmirer: When a young beautiful female fan asks for Brian to sign her examplary of his book, Brian instead gives her his phone number, clearly wanting to sleep with her. She's understandably creeped out.
14	* AcquiredSituationalNarcissism: Taken to the highest degree. Following the success of his novel, Brian goes from an already pretentious hack to a delusional, pompous, entitled bully.
15	* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Despite how unimpressed he is with Brian's book, Bill Maher does smile and laugh after Brian makes fun of Arianna Huffington's accent, claiming that he didn't understand her because she sounds like her mouth is full of syrup.
16	* AintTooProudToBeg: After Bill Maher delivers his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, Brian is reduced to begging Bill to tell him what Bill wants him to say in a desperate bid to get his approval, while urinating himself in the process.
17	* BackhandedApology: Brian gives one to Stewie at the end. His apology isn't "I'm sorry for being such an irrational dick" so much as "I'm sorry I wasn't more patient with your incompetence".
18	-->'''Stewie:''' That's as good as it's gonna get, isn't it?\
19	'''Brian:''' Pretty much.\
20	'''Stewie:''' You can't write.
21	* BaitAndSwitch:
22	** When Brian leaves Stewie alone without a ride home, he says that [[TemptingFate at least it's not raining]], leading the audience to believe that it's going to rain. He gets stabbed instead.
23	** The episode initially makes it seem like Stewie's going to go mad with power as Brian's publicist. Halfway, through, Brian is the one who becomes a pompous egotist, well, more than usual, who starts to bully Stewie.
24	* BiggerThanJesus: Discussed.
25	-->'''Brian:''' I used to think that Music/JohnLennon was kind of a jerk for saying The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but now, I mean, I'm not saying that I am, but I ''get'' it.
26	* BreakTheHaughty: It only takes a few minutes for Bill Maher to change Brian from a pompous dick to bashing his own book to save face and wetting himself in a panic.
27	* BerserkButton:
28	** Bill Maher is quick to angrily chase Brian out after the latter wets himself on the set.
29	** Brian himself is quick to fly off the handle at Stewie whenever anything is less than perfect after the success of ''Wish It, Want It, Do It'' goes to his head. It culminates in Stewie being fired after the Bill Maher show has a last-minute change with the guests on the panel.
30	* ColorBlindConfusion: Brian complains during a particularly prima-donna moment that all the M&Ms brought to him are gray when he specifically said to remove them, the joke being that, as a dog, they're all going to look that way to him.
31	* CueTheRain: Subverted and parodied. After being stranded without a ride, Stewie declares that "at least it's not raining." Instead of rain breaking out, a random guy shanks him.
32	* DeadpanSnarker: Stewie, though Brian quickly puts him in his place.
33	-->'''Stewie:''' Oh. "Great job". So you know that phrase.\
34	'''Brian:''' ''irked'' What's that?\
35	'''Stewie:''' ''eyes bulge'' [[OhCrap What?]]\
36	'''Brian:''' ''angry'' ''What'' phrase do I know?\
37	'''Stewie:''' ''meek'' Bill Maher, woo!
38	* DeathGlare: Brian gives Stewie a nasty one when he makes it clear that Stewie isn't welcome on his ride back to their hotel. Stewie is too intimidated to argue further.
39	* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: Bill Maher points out that "wish it" and "want it" mean the same thing, weakening the points presented in the book's title.
40	* DiggingYourselfDeeper: After Bill Maher, Arianna Huffington and Dana Gould demolish his book and his arguments to defend it, Brian resorts to petty insults against Gould and Huffington, before desperately admitting to Maher that he wrote his book in a day and that he just wanted to write something that sells, and that he thinks it's crap too. This causes Bill Maher to lose any shred of respect he had for Brian and to tear him apart for not at least standing by his book, culminating in Brian desperately begging Bill to tell him what he wants Brian to say and urinating himself.
41	* DisproportionateRetribution: The penultimate straw in the camel's back for Stewie as Brian's publicist is with him ''standing under an air vent'' despite the environment. He proceeds to cut off Stewie's attempts to explain by mimicking him before the change in Bill Maher's guests causes Brian to fire Stewie.
42	* DoesNotLikeSpam: Brian requested that he be given no gray [=M&Ms=].
43	* EntitledBastard: Brian after his book becomes a success acts like he's owed everything in the world, he makes very high standard and absurd demands to Stewie, gets angry at him for petty inconveniences such as someone he doesn't like being in the same restaurant than him or being below an air vent, and pettily tells one of his young female fans that he now hates her for not wanting to sleep with him.
44	* EvilIsPetty: Brian keeps abusing Stewie over minor inconveniences, most of which Stewie has no control over, and resorts to pettily insulting Arianna Huffington's accent and Dana Gould over having a girl name, as they criticize his book.
45	* FurryReminder:
46	-->'''Brian:''' I said no gray [=M&Ms=]. These are ''all'' gray![[note]]For those who don't get it, dogs are colorblind, meaning that no matter what color [=M&Ms=] the production assistant gets for Brian, they're going to be gray to him.[[/note]]
47	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: When Stewie started out as Brian's publicist, he was a bit of a jerk himself: As they did their first interview at the Channel 5 News Station, Stewie was very condescending and aggressive towards a stage-hand for minimal service. By then, Brian's ego started to swell and started to treat Stewie just as badly, if not worse.
48	* InsultBackfire: Part of when Brian is defending himself against one of Bill's guests, writer Dana Gould:
49	-->'''Brian:''' Aren't you a sitcom writer? Yeah, I'm an ''author'', I have contributed to the zeitgeist.\
50	'''Dana:''' Do you even know what "zeitgeist" means?[[note]]the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history[[/note]]\
51	'''Brian:''' [[KnowNothingKnowItAll If I didn't know what it meant, I wouldn't use it, ''Dana''... which is a ''girl's'' name.]] [[BlatantLies And you know, I'm not gonna give you the definition r-right now just for your satisfaction.]]
52	* ItWillNeverCatchOn: An unintentional example, with a very long joke making fun of Bradley Cooper that states he'll never make it big. Needless to say, Cooper wound up doing extremely well for himself after this episode.
53	* {{Jerkass}}: Brian. Even by the standards of his post-cancellation self, he's a pretty big dick in this episode, becoming even more pompous and entitled than ever before.
54	* LaserGuidedKarma: For all of Brian's assholery displayed in the episode (his pretentious, demanding behavior, his mistreatment of fans--i.e., being dismissive of an overweight female fan while eventually telling a good-looking female fan he ''hates'' her for refusing to sleep with him--and especially how his lack of gratitude for Stewie), he ends up being embarrassed and ridiculed by Bill Maher and his guests so badly that he ends up [[PottyFailure urinating himself on the air.]]
55	* MaliciousMisnaming: Brian does this to Arianna Huffington after she criticizes his book, calling her "Zsa Zsa", though she instantly responds in kind by calling him "Snoopy".
56	* MoneyDearBoy: InUniverse, Brian's real motivation for writing ''Wish It, Want It, Do It.''
57	* NeverMyFault: Brian blames Stewie for everything that goes wrong. Stewie eventually gives up at the end when it becomes clear that he's never gonna stop.
58	* OpinionFlipflop: Brian's hypocritical tendencies are lampshaded in excess this episode. Brian initially writes "Wish It, Want It, Do It" to prove that any idiot can write a self-help book. After it becomes a hit, he parades it to egomaniacal lengths until Bill Maher criticizes it for being the kind of self-destructive crap that morons buy, at which point a desperate Brian slams it as well. Maher loses any respect he had of Brian and lets him have it, telling him to at least have the courage to stand by the material he makes, good or bad. It gets to the point he's pretty much begging Maher to give him an opinion to convert to so as [[IJustWantToBeSpecial to gain his approval]].
59	-->'''Brian:''' ''exasperated'' Just tell me what it is that you want me to say!!!
60	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
61	** Bill Maher tells Brian that he is a weak writer not just because of the crap he wrote, but because he doesn't even try to defend said crap.
62	** Dana Gould and Creator/AriannaHuffington give liberal doses of this trope in their criticism of Brian's book, which Brian does not handle well at ''all'' and acts as a giant dick towards them for making such suggestions.
63	* RogerRabbitEffect: Brian appears on the real live-action set of ''Series/RealTimeWithBillMaher''.
64	* SmallNameBigEgo: Brian, after one good break with a crappy self-help book, presumes to talk down to Arianna Huffington and Dana Gould, who are, respectively, an immensely successful author and actor-writer.
65	* SpringtimeForHitler: Brian wrote the book as an insult to self-help books and didn't put in any effort in writing it (he did it in a night and a majority of the pages were blank). It becomes a major success and Brian instantly forgets why he wrote it in the first place.
66	* TakeThat: On the TV version, the show once again makes fun of Renee Zellweger by making her look like an ant-eater. On the DVD, Renee Zellweger looks normal and instead, the target is on how mediocre Creator/BradleyCooper -- who was dating Zellweger at the time -- is.
67	* TheUnapologetic: Brian refuses to own up to his horrible behavior at the very end of the episode, and every time it seems like he's going to apologize it quickly turns into him once again blaming Stewie for everything that happened but in an incredibly passive-aggressive manner. Stewie decides to respond directly to his face that he can't write.
68	* TookALevelInJerkass: Over the course of the episode, Brian goes from being genuinely appreciative of Stewie and only being critical of a couple of small things to yelling at him for things he has no control over and angrily firing him.
69	* UngratefulBastard: Brian. Even after all Stewie does for him, all it takes is a couple of mistakes on Stewie's part (which weren't even really his fault) for Brian to get angry at Stewie and fire him. Worse still, it was Stewie who [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre convinced Brian to give writing another chance]] after the latter declared himself done with writing when he saw how bad the sales of his previous book were.

Context Recap / FamilyGuyS9E6BrianWritesABestseller