15 Best Stewie & Brian Episodes

The best Brian and Stewie episodes in Family Guy history remain some of the best for the animated series overall thanks to their strong relationship. While characters like Peter, Quagmire, Meg, and even Lois to an extent, are good for rapid-fire jokes, Brian and Stewie have a deeper connection and often bring the heart to the series that otherwise would just be an afterthought. Through Family Guy’s run, Brian and Stewie seem to have grown even closer throughout the years, and while they weren’t the original partners in crime, they are easily the best duo on the show now.

At the beginning of Family Guy’s run, the central duo was Peter and Brian. Peter would do and say ridiculous things as a less family-friendly version of Homer Simpson and Brian would react to his antics as the dry, deadpan voice of reason. However, as the show went on, the writers found that there was even more comedic potential in pairing Brian with diabolical baby Stewie. From Brian accidentally reversing the course of time to Stewie getting pregnant with a bunch of their human-dog hybrid babies, Stewie and Brian’s relationship has defined Family Guy’s storied history.

15 Road To Rhode Island

Season 2, Episode 13

The most popular Brian and Stewie episodes are the “Road To…” installments. They parody the Road To… movies starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, which were all adventure and comedy gags with almost no plot, a perfect fit for Family Guy. “Road to Rhode Island” was the first of these and in a wholesome Family Guy moment, this story leads Brian to the puppy mill where he was left as a baby and his mother.

In the episode, Brian agrees to go pick up Stewie from his grandparents’ summer home, but after getting drunk and losing their plane tickets, they take a road trip back home. The strong writing earned the episode an Emmy nomination, although it lost to The Simpsons. This Brian and Stewie episode was also notable for its musical numbers, with Seth MacFarlane, who voices both Brian and Stewie, flexing his singing abilities by performing a duet with himself.

14 Road To Rupert

Season 5, Episode 9

One of the reasons the Brian and Stewie episodes of Family Guy are so memorable is that Brian is a talking dog and Stewie is a talking baby that most characters can’t understand, meaning that the duo’s adventures are always odd from the off. However, they’re even funnier when it’s a plot that leans into something typically related to dogs or babies — such as when Stewie loses his favorite toy. If there is one character on Family Guy who could come between Brian and Stewie, it is Rupert. Stewie’s beloved teddy bear is almost always by his side.

“Road To Rupert” finds Brian accidentally selling Rupert at a family yard sale leading Stewie to drag him on a cross-country journey to get him back. The episode lacks some of the adventure of other “Road to” episodes. However, there are plenty of memorable moments, including a song and dance number that puts Stewie alongside musical movie icon Gene Kelly.

13 The Tan Aquatic With Steve Zissou

Season 5, Episode 11

Brian and Stewie episodes often see one of them taking care of the other, whether it’s tracking down Brian’s biological parents or rescuing Stewie’s favorite toy. However, the plotlines grow steadily more ridiculous as the show goes on, especially when the show seems to forget that Stewie is a baby and Brian is a dog — as with season 5’s “The Tan Aquatic With Steve Zissou”. The plot sees Stewie gets into tanning after Peter takes him out in the sun without sunscreen, but he overdoes it and fears he might have cancer.

In one of the best Family Guy episodes, while Stewie waits to hear back from the doctor, Brian helps him check off all the items on his bucket list. Since Stewie isn’t definitely dying, Brian has very little patience for his convoluted, demanding final wishes. The episode also has a nice homage to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with Stewie wanting to visit the Art Institute of Chicago.

12 Saving Private Brian

Season 5, Episode 4

As well as being both a controversial Family Guy episodes and one of its best moments of social commentary, this Brian and Stewie adventure also has some of the funniest moments the two share. In season 5’s “Saving Private Brian”, the plot starts simply enough, when Brian visits the military recruiter who tried to sign up Chris to give him a piece of his mind. However, things take a turn for the ridiculous when Stewie ends up enlisting both himself and Brian and they’re deployed to Iraw.

In this Brian and Stewie episode, after passing boot camp, the two are shipped right off to fight, and sending Stewie and Brian to the frontlines was a great lens through which to satirize the Iraq War. Besides just being another example of the terrible things Stewie can do, the premise is just a vehicle for jokes at first, but Stewie convinces Brian to stick with it because he has a history of quitting, giving the episode an emotional arc lacking from most Family Guy installments.

11 Stewie Is Enceinte

Season 13, Episode 12

Stewie notices Brian growing distant in season 13’s “Stewie is Enceinte,” which is by far one of the strangest Brian and Stewie episodes in Family Guy so far, and he decides to get closer to him in the most disturbing way possible: stealing Brian’s DNA and impregnating himself with a bunch of human-dog hybrid babies. It’s a great Stewie and Brian adventure, but because of its dark premise and graphic moments, it’s also a controversial Family Guy episode.

Stewie and Brian manage to bond over trying to figure out the kids’ confusing biology once the seven human-puppy hybrids arrive. The episode also played the trope of adults being oblivious to everything going on, as they never even noted Stewie’s pregnancy. It’s a far cry from earlier entries in the show like season 2’s “Road to Rhode Island”, though this is partly because as the show went on it leaned more into the idea of Stewie having a romantic interest in Brian.

10 Yug Ylimaf

Season 11, Episode 4

As well as the “Road to…” premise, a common theme of Stewie and Brian’s adventures in Family Guy is the pair using Stewie’s time machine. In one of the many time travel Brian and Stewie episodes, after his pickup attempts fail miserably, Brian starts using Stewie’s time machine to impress women in season 11’s “Yug Ylimaf.” While the time machine may belong to Stewie, this Brian and Stewie episode shows that Brian is just as capable of messing with forces beyond his understanding and with disastrous consequences.

When he tries to turn back the year-o-meter to cover his tracks, time starts moving in reverse. Brian screws something up and Stewie is left struggling to fix it in one of Family Guy‘s best sci-fi adventures. However, in “Yug Ylimaf,” it’s left in Brian’s hands to save the day and fix everything when the reverse time catches up with Stewie’s birth, making for a fun twist on the formula.

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9 Stuck Together, Torn Apart

Season 3, Episode 19

While many of the best Brian and Stewie episodes come in later seasons of Family Guy after some of their funniest quirks and mannerisms had been fully established — such as Stewie’s barely-concealed attraction to Brian, or Brian ultimately being a pretty sleazy guy — the earlier seasons had some incredibly memorable adventures for the pair. The best Brian and Stewie episodes often find a way to show that the two can’t quit each other.

While Peter and Lois give separation a try, Brian and Stewie get stuck to each other with industrial-strength glue in the season 3 episode “Stuck Together, Torn Apart.” Naturally, after having to spend every waking moment together for days on end, Brian and Stewie grow to hate each other. But they eventually use the time to bond and become so close that even after the solvent arrives, they keep holding hands.

8 Peter’s Daughter

Season 6, Episode 7

If one thing sums up Stewie on Family Guy, it is that he is a schemer. This personality trait is used to great effect in one of the best Brian and Stewie episodes, one that’s also memorable because Stewie is acting like an adult throughout, and because it doesn’t involve time travel or a road trip. The premise is relatable yet utterly hilarious: Stewie convinces Brian to invest in a fixer-upper in the B-plot of season 6’s “Peter’s Daughter.”

They quickly find they’ve bitten off more than they can chew as neither of them knows the first thing about home renovation, and they have constant communication problems (primarily with the classic “over” walkie-talkie bit). When Stewie suggests blowing up the building, he and Brian dive away from the explosion in dozens of different camera angles, the same way action movies milk explosions for every ounce of spectacle they can.

7 North By North Quahog

Season 4, Episode 1

Much like “Peter’s Daughter”, this Brian and Stewie episode is full of hilarious moments not because of quasi sci-fi antics courtesy of one of Stewie’s devices, nor does it feature a road trip. Instead, it’s funny simply because it repositions Brian and Stewie doing regular adult activities and, much like when they tried to fix up a house together, failing spectacularly.

While Peter and Lois are on vacation trying to spice up their marriage in “North by North Quahog” (the first episode after the show was un-canceled by Fox), Brian is left in charge of the kids and instantly proves to be an ineffective disciplinarian. Stewie helps out, and Brian and Stewie quickly morph into a bickering married couple. This was one of the early episodes that solidified Brian and Stewie’s dynamic and started them on the journey to becoming Family Guy’s central double act.

6 Movin’ Out (Brian’s Song)

Season 6, Episode 2

One of the first episodes that showed just how jealous Stewie can be when it comes to Brian is when Brian gets an apartment with his girlfriend in “Movin’ Out (Brian’s Song).” Despite being a baby, Stewie moves in to help with the rent and establishes himself as an annoying roommate, with his absence also hilarious not being noticed by Lois and Peter.

Brian thought Stewie got on his nerves at the Griffins’ house, but that was nothing compared to sharing an apartment with him. Since he’s still just a baby (albeit a baby with walking-around money), Stewie wants to sleep in Brian and Jillian’s bed when he’s scared. In the end, with all his terrible decisions and actions, Stewie proves to be a terrible roommate. The episode is made all the funnier thanks to Jillian, voiced by Drew Barrymore, one of the best recurring Family Guy characters.

5 Back To The Pilot

Season 10, Episode 5

While Brian and Stewie’s antics with the time machine take them back to many historical moments such as Germany during WW2, one of the best uses of the idea was when Family Guy went full meta and the pair travelled from season 10 of the show back to its first episode. In season 10’s “Back to the Pilot,” Stewie takes Brian back in time to Family Guy’s pilot episode to see where he buried a bone.

The stakes are raised when Brian seizes the opportunity to prevent 9/11, which has dire multiversal ramifications. The episode has a lot of meta gags about how much Family Guy and its characters have changed since the pilot episode as the glossy, modern Stewie and Brian enter the cruder animation of the show’s early seasons. If there is one Family Guy episode that slams home how much the show has changed over the years, it is this one.

4 Brian & Stewie

Season 8, Episode 17

Easily the greatest Brian and Stewie episodes in Family Guy history outside the “Road to…” specials is the extended episode that puts the focus squarely on their friendship. It also featured one of Family Guy’s saddest moments. In season 8’s “Brian & Stewie,” the titular duo gets locked in a bank over a weekend. A prime example of a bottle episode, “Brian & Stewie” breaks many Family Guy traditions.

It has no other characters, no cutaway gags, and no music besides the opening theme. Brian and Stewie simply sit in the bank’s safe deposit box room, which leads to a deep dive into their relationship. Brian reveals that he occasionally has suicidal thoughts and Stewie reveals that he depends on Brian, which gives him a reason to live. Not only is it a great Brian and Stewie episode, it’s also one of the darkest and most somber Family Guy installments to date.

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3 Road To The North Pole

Season 9, Episode 7

“Road to the North Pole” has the distinction of being, not only one of the best “Road to” episodes, but also one of the best Christmas episodes of Family Guy. The story follows Stewie becoming disillusioned with Santa after a bad experience at the mall and heading out to the North Pole to kill him. The episode represents some of the best aspects of what makes Family Guy a great adult animated series.

There is a lot of dark humor as well as some of the best songs the show has ever produced. It also features some true highlights of Brian and Stewie’s shenanigans, especially their ill-fated attempt to take over for Santa. It’s now considered a classic Family Guy episode in its own right, even for those who aren’t fans of the Brian and Stewie-centric plots, and an incredibly novel take on the Christmas-entertainment trope of someone else having to step in as Father Christmas.

2 Roads To Vegas

Season 11, Episode 21

The most hilarious and ambitious of the “Road to…” Brian and Stewie episode on Family Guy is season 11’s “Roads to Vegas.” It was much darker than other Family Guy episodes. Stewie tries teleporting himself and Brian to Vegas for a Cher concert, and when the experiment seems to have failed, clones of Stewie and Brian arrive in Sin City. While one Stewie and Brian have the time of their lives, the other Stewie and Brian suffer the consequences.

This episode was actually part of a two-part season finale for Family Guy. With the bad luck coming to one of the Brian and Stewie combinations and the death of one in each duo, it delivered a great parallel story without getting bogged down with the normal non-stop barrage of jokes that often interject in Family Guy episodes. When watched as a one-two punch with “No Country Club For Old Men,” it showed how the show was hitting on all cylinders in season 11.

1 Road To The Multiverse

Season 8, Episode 1

The multiverse in the MCU and other superhero movies has become hugely popular, however, Family Guy beat them all to the punch years earlier with “Road to the Multiverse.” It’s not surprising that Stewie was able to invent a device that allows him to visit different realities within the multiverse and it is even less surprising that things go wrong when he and Brian decide to take the device for a spin.

The mayhem causes Brian and Stewie to hope between different realities in their attempt to return home. This results in hilarious gags like them winding up in a musical yet surprisingly dark Disney universe, a Flintstones universe, and a universe where dogs are the dominant species. The episode is a perfect setup for the typical Family Guy delivery of rapid-fire jokes while also forming a genuine story around the gags.

Family Guy

Family Guy, created by Seth McFarlane and David Zuckerman, follows Peter Griffin and his family as they find themselves in bizarre situations in the fictional city of Quahog, Road Island. Between the cutaway gags and memorable characters such as Chris, Meg, Lois, Stewie, and Brian, Family Guy has become one of Fox’s most successful animations, even winning several Primetime Emmys.

Cast

Seth MacFarlane , Alex Borstein , Seth Green , Lacey Chabert , Mila Kunis , Mike Henry , Patrick Warburton

Release Date

January 31, 1999

Seasons

21

Network

FOX

Streaming Service(s)

Hulu

Showrunner

Seth MacFarlane

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