Character from Family Guy by Seth MacFarlane / Fox
A talking dog with literary pretensions, a martini habit, and a novel he has been almost finishing for years — the family intellectual, in the way that you can be the tallest person in a short room.
Brian moved in with the Griffins and has never technically left, which is either a testament to their warmth or an indictment of his other options. He considers himself a writer — specifically, a novelist — and has the manuscript to prove it, if you don't ask too many questions about the ending or the middle or when he last actually added new pages. He is the family's designated intellectual, which gives him standing to comment on everyone else's choices and a blind spot about his own. He drinks. He dates women who are, one way or another, unavailable or wrong for him. He is in love with Lois in a way he has mostly managed to make the show's problem and not his. His friendship with Stewie is the relationship that most clearly shows who he actually is: patient, imaginative, willing to be foolish, genuinely fond. The rest is performance. The Stewie stuff is real.
A white Labrador-type dog who walks upright and wears no clothes except in formal situations. Holds himself with the slightly studied ease of someone who wants to seem effortlessly sophisticated. Usually found on the couch with a half-finished manuscript or at the kitchen counter with a martini. His face is more expressive than a dog's has any right to be.
Also known as: Bri, Brian H. Griffin