Brian's Play

Plot

Brian writes a play, entitled A Passing Fancy, that is a hit in Quahog, but just as he lets his success go to his head, Stewie comes to him wanting him to read a play he has written. Brian humors him at first, and eventually reads the play after a night of drinking and philosophical discussion with aspiring writers, but his confidence is shaken when the play Stewie wrote, entitled An American Marriage, is much better than his. Brian tries to lower Stewie's expectations and attempts to destroy the only copy. But when Stewie finds it buried in the yard, he reveals that he knows Brian's work is inferior because it turned out Stewie was the one that knew Brian's play was so bad that it was easy for Chris and Peter to follow the plot. Stewie points out to Brian that he has "a voice" when it comes to writing, while Brian doesn't, and all he does is steal ideas from others saying every person who laughs or criticizes his writing is a reminder that he will never be a good writer. This makes Brian emotionally fall apart, chase and kill a squirrel.

As Brian sinks into depression, Stewie said that his play is Broadway bound invites him to escort him around New York. At a party for playwrights, Brian tries to ingratiate himself with big-name writers but finds that not only had they seen his play, they pronounce it the worst piece of writing they had ever seen. Stewie finds Brian even further depressed and Brian admits he knew Stewie's writing was better but had hoped that he could have at least had a chance to be the good writer in the family before his eventual demise. Stewie said that everything Brian said is "his voice" and he should write from his heart and mind.

At the opening of Stewie's play, the crowd leaves unhappy and Brian is confused over why Stewie had changed it. Stewie claims that he just wanted to "tweak" it a bit but had gone too far, though he really wanted to make Brian happy again by making his own play a disaster. As they leave the theater, Stewie admires New York and professes a desire to live there one day until they are snatched by a Pterodactyl.

Reception

The episode received a 3.2 rating and was watched by a total of 6.01 million people, this made it the most watched show on Animation Domination that night beating The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, American Dad! and The Simpsons. The episode was met with generally positive reviews from critics. Kevin McFarland of The A.V. Club gave the episode a A–, saying "This is Family Guy at its most self-aware—and more importantly, self aware in the right way, taking stock of its place in the world and remaining honest, something it hasn’t done in years. Business-as-usual cutaways add a little bit here and there, but for the most part the standard building blocks of Family Guy humor gets in the way of the introspective main plot." Carter Dotson of TV Fanatic gave the episode four out of five stars, saying "Yet I think because of the fact that the emotions were so complicated, that’s why it was hard to swallow. I certainly had trouble forming coherent thoughts on how to describe my thoughts on this episode, and still am not quite sure how I feel. Still, the fact that this series can pull off this trick of being more than just manatee jokes, I suppose I like being reminded of that fact more than perhaps what I actually watched, which I’m still not completely sure about my feelings on it, to be honest."