I'm really sick of hearing how "hated" this episode is...I thought it was pretty good. I can see the points being made, but I wouldn't bash it necessarily, which I feel a lot of people have done (being a huge Brian fan).
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I don't like the episode so much, but I hate how fans whine and moan about it. Just get over it and move on.
I really hate how they trash Brian but are all like "oh, poor Meg!" Yeah, Brian shouldn't have said that stuff at the end, but Meg is far from blameless in it all, since she got Brian publicly shamed to the point that he was called worse than Hitler. If anything, Meg did the worse of two evils.
The problem is that the episode spends first third making Meg incredbile likable woobie, having entire family abuse or not care about her and she is shown to be actualy happy when she finds religion (making the audiance strongly sympathise with her) and then trying to paint her as a jerk and strawmaning for the sake of the not very suddle message (basicaly episode say "if you religion you are automaticaly stupid and intolerant") In other words - they try to make a villian of her, after whe just realise why she would find comfort in faith and are actualy rooting for her.
The writers seams to forget that - like it or not - most of the world is religious, hence fiding the message incredible biased if not offencive. Of course Brian being painted as only sane man just to rubb the message in will turn people off and make them dislike the characters. Despite dosens of harsh jokes at religion expense the episode dosen't even make a token attempt to make fun or satires Brian's atheism which adds to the episode being one sided. Not to bring up other shows but when South Park did "Religion vs. Atheism" episodes at least they try to make fun of both sides of the issue and let the viewer decide rather then go the "one side is 100% stupid and insane, other is 100% right and snane" road... or some other shows when the satire religion simply don't bring the atheism into the picture and just have the viewer make up his own conclusion rather then going "Hey! Look! There is another option then religion!", which is what "Not all dogs go to heaven" is trying to do.
The story may work in the context of it's own world but seeing how the episode is ment to be satire/commentary on real world it's just feels like Seth and the writers screaming from a soap boax with Brian being the megaphone. It's just preachy in less subtle and more obnoctious ways and no matter how episode is unfair to Brain, the context makes people hate him for the fact he represents the message and the creators... plus, yeah, what he say on the very end is just taking away Meg faith by insulting her without giving her any alternative to her problems. It's not like she is happy the moment she realise there is no God, the episode makes it look like she is back to being miserable and Brian is happy he put her in her place - the end. Frankly Brain explenation what's the meanig of life feels ingenuine and is lazy glued into the episode.
Another problem is that a lot of people felt cheated by the Star Treck reunion thing which turns out to only be a subplot while the main story wasn't adversized.
And yes, like it or not most people I seen online HATE this episode. Franky the story was just a massive miscalculation on the showrunners parts who just asume 100% of their audiance is anti-religious and would enjoy entire episode of faith bashing, no matter what poor poitns they will make.
Edited by JustinNotSeen
The One Where there was nothing for five tickets.