Brian writes a play, entitled A Passing Fancy, which is a hit in Quahog. Just as he lets his success go to his head, Stewie asks him to read a play he has written. Brian humors him and reads the play after a night of drinking and philosophical discussion with aspiring writers, but he realizes Stewie's play, entitled An American Marriage, is much better than his. His confidence shaken, Brian tells Stewie the play is bad and attempts to destroy the script, but Stewie finds it buried in the yard. Angered, he reveals that he knew Brian's work was inferior because it was easy for even Chris and Peter to follow the plot of A Passing Fancy. Stewie claims that he has a creative voice when it comes to writing, while Brian uses overdone clichés and blatant plagiarism. This makes Brian emotionally fall apart and chase and kill a squirrel.

As Brian sinks into depression, Stewie says that his play is Broadway-bound and demands Brian escort him around New York. At a party for playwrights, Brian tries to ingratiate himself with big-name writers, but they mention that they have seen his play and pronounce it the worst piece of writing they have ever seen. Outside, 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 he dies far sooner than the rest of them. Stewie says that Brian is speaking with his own 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 as to why Stewie changed it. Stewie claims that he just wanted to "tweak" it a bit, though he really wanted to make Brian happy again by sabotaging his own play. 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.

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.^[2] The episode was met with generally positive reviews from critics. Kevin McFarland of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 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."^[3] 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."^[4]

• "Brian's Play" at IMDb