I'm a big fan of Family Guy, but that whole thing seemed completely stupid.

Yeah, I am sure they did it to spice it up.

I wanted to be able to refer to all Family Guy episodes as before-Brian and after-Brian, but now I can't.

I respected MacFarlane so much for having the balls to kill off one of the shows main characters, but now it's just like Gilligan's Island and every show after - by the end of the episode, they are right back where they started.

Haven't seen FG for a few years, I just assume they've spent their creative forces much like The Simpsons did. At some point a show should be over and the fact that your actors aren't on screen shouldn't prevent that.

I still like that show, pretty much only for the Stewie-Brian dynamic. Without Brain, it'd be like the Simpsons if Homer ever got his act together. Plus Vinnie was the most unlikeable character in all of television history (he made jokes about crippling gay people for Christ-sakes)

I only like the parodies/spoofs in FG.

I don't know. I was fine with the whole thing. I kind of liked that they screwed with everyone like that over the span of a few episodes.

It's just a TV show.

I knew it would happen since the Twinkie-Apocalypse/Bobby-and-Pam-Ewing-from-Dallas-it-was-all-a-dream Episode paved the way for complete retconning.

Family Guy Live Action Intro(duction) Homemade for Volume 12 has been added as a related post - related requested by ant on that post.