There are a few of Brian Griffin’s characteristics that Family Guy has gotten a lot of comedic mileage out of, from his transparently exaggerated liberalism to the fact that he thinks he’s singlehandedly saving the world by driving a Prius. One well that the writers love going back to — because they’re writers — is Brian’s writing career.
For the first few seasons of the show, Brian was intermittently working on a novel called Faster Than the Speed of Love. It was eventually published in season 7, but received some of the worst reviews of all time and failed to sell a single copy.
Lois Laughs Hysterically At The Premise
After working on his novel on and off for a few years, Brian tells Lois he’s finally come up with a title: Faster Than the Speed of Love. She starts laughing hysterically and tells him it’s the worst title she’s ever heard.
To save face, he tries explaining the plot to her, but that just makes her laugh harder. Then, when he explains the deeper themes, she laughs even harder.
Procrastination
Since it’s a lot easier and more fun to talk about being a writer than it is to sit down in front of a blank page and make up a story from scratch, procrastination is pretty common in the writing community.
Throughout the first few seasons of Family Guy, there was a running joke that Brian would spend more time talking about his novel than actually writing it.
Norm Hull
In the episode “Stewie Goes for a Drive,” Stewie gets a taste of life on the road and decides to steal Brian’s Prius for a joy ride. While he’s sneaking around the kitchen and taking Brian’s keys, Brian is openly working on a new story about “a guy who loses everything but finds his soul in Canada.”
He comes up with the name “Norm Hull” for the protagonist, “‘cause he’s just a normal guy. But not everybody will get that. That’s just for the scholars a hundred years from now.”
Nine Years
All in all, it took Brian nine years of mostly procrastination to finally complete his universally panned debut novel. It took him even longer to finish his book than it took Bonnie to have the baby she was already heavily pregnant with when the series debuted.
Writing a novel is difficult, of course, but based on what we’ve heard about the quality of Brian’s plotting and character work, it shouldn’t have taken that long to write Faster Than the Speed of Love.
Iron Eagle
When Brian tells Lois the plot of his novel — a young boy has to reunite his dad’s old army buddies to save him — she points out that it’s the exact same plot as the movie Iron Eagle.
He tells her he added his own twist to the premise, as they have to work together with a Japanese pilot who was once their enemy, but Lois points out that’s from one of the sequels. Brian claims to have never seen any of the Iron Eagle movies and sticks with his unwittingly plagiarized story.
Brian Sells Out His Beliefs For A Publishing Deal
Brian finally manages to get Faster Than the Speed of Love published in the episode “420.” He gets marijuana legalized in Quahog, much to the chagrin of Carter, who offers him a publishing deal to get it re-illegalized.
Stewie can’t tell Brian with a straight face that his book will get published on its own merits, so he sells out his own beliefs just to get the book on shelves — and then it’s unanimously panned by critics.
Zero Copies Sold
After Brian finally manages to get his book published, it sells zero copies. It does eventually get picked up by the Rhode Island Society for Special Literary Excellence, but it doesn’t sell a single copy in its initial run.
Some unsold copies are shredded up to line the boxes containing all the other unsold copies. There are so many that they also use the unsold books to pack packages for other members of the Griffin family.
Wish It, Want It, Do It
When his debut novel is hit with terrible reviews and historically low sales, Brian decides to give up writing. He’s mad that the bestselling books are self-help guides he could churn out in a night.
Stewie encourages Brian to go for it as long as he doesn’t care about writing anymore and the resulting book — Wish It, Want It, Do It — is a massive success, which goes straight to Brian’s head, as he completely loses sight of why he wrote it in the first place.
Oprah’s Book Club
When Carter has Faster Than the Speed of Love published, he manages to get a coveted Oprah’s Book Club sticker. That sticker signifies that Oprah Winfrey herself has recommended the book, and so it’s pretty much guaranteed to sell well.
Still, despite having the Oprah’s Book Club sticker on the jacket, Brian doesn’t manage to sell a single copy of his novel. Tom Tucker names it the worst-selling book in history.
“Still Working On That Novel?”
Every now and then, when Brian was working on Faster Than the Speed of Love, Stewie would ask him about his progress with an increasingly high-pitched tone of voice.
He asks question after question as Brian tries to let it roll off his back: “Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end, your main character is richer from the experience?”