Airdate: January 13, 2013.
Brian composes a play that's a hit in Quahog, but just as he lets his success go to his head, Stewie creates a far superior play — one that has a chance at becoming big on Broadway.
"Brian's Play" contains examples of (YMMV examples go here):
- Always Someone Better: Stewie, who writes a play that Brian finds himself in awe over.
- As You Know: You know Brian’s play is bad when it opens with the line, “Donna? It’s Grant, your new husband.”
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Jasper, Brian’s gay cousin, who always appeared relatively polite and good-spirited in past appearances. In this episode, he’s the one who tells Brian to denounce Stewie’s play when Brian asks for his advice on how to handle it.
- Break the Haughty: Brian acts proud of his play and hates that Stewie's is much better, but ends up heartbroken after realising that the one seemingly good thing he wrote wasn't that great and that he may never amount to anything in the few years he has left.
- Brick Joke: A Cutaway Gag had a woman arrive in New York and be snatched by a pterodactyl. The same thing happens to Brian and Stewie at the end.
- Child Prodigy: Brian is stunned that Stewie's play is so good.
- Clueless Aesop: The episode seems to tell the viewer that, if you are brilliant, talented and young, you should hold yourself back and deny your potential, so as to not harm the egos of people who are not as good as you.
- Despair Event Horizon: Peter's inability to figure out Stuart Little makes him feel old and in the way.
- Freak Out: Played for dark humor. Brian replaced Peter's I Can't Believe it's not Butter with real butter and Peter goes insane from the confusion. He ends up institutionalized after killing three kids (whether the three kids were Meg, Stewie, and Chris or just three random kids isn't known).
- Gaslighting: As mentioned above, Brian tricked Peter by replacing I Can't Believe It's Not Butter with real butter. The resulting confusion led to Peter having a psychotic breakdown and murdering three kids.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Peter when he finds out he ate real butter instead of I Cant Believe It's Not Butter.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Brian, to Stewie.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: For all of, or perhaps resulting in his ego issues, Brian's fears of not amounting to anything resurface at the end of the episode, as he ruminates over not having the fraction of life ahead of him that Stewie will, let alone the fact that Stewie already has greatness while Brian struggles to rise above mediocrity.
- Informed Ability: Justified with Brian as we're told his play is brilliant, even though it's obviously terrible. Turns out that the standards of Quahog are very low, as the play isn't up to snuff in the eyes of playwrights such as David Mamet and Alan Bennett.
- Karma Houdini: Jasper never gets called out or punished for telling Brian he should lie to Stewie about his play being bad just so Brian will feel better.
- Kick the Dog: In this case, it's a dog performing the kicking. While Brian's jealousy is sympathetic he deliberately lies to Stewie, his best friend who trusts him, that his play is terrible just to protect his ego.
- Pandering to the Base: Invoked. When condemning Brian's failings as a writer, Stewie says he has no unique voice and that his play simply panders to the given audience. To justify that claim, he cites how Peter and Chris were able to follow the play with ease (with the former taking a year to figure out "Stuart Little").
- Pet the Dog: In a sense, Stewie had his negative opinions of Brian's play but didn't initially express his honest opinions and actually asked for the dog's opinion.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: Stewie claims that Brian's play has dialogue plagiarized from other sources like Seinfeld, which Brian does a poor job denying.
- Psychological Projection: Brian catches a squirrel and accuses him of writing a bad play. The squirrel replies that this isn't really about him, which Brian acknowledges before killing the squirrel to keep him from telling anyone.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Stewie gives Brian a "Reason Your Writing Sucks" speech, saying what exactly is wrong with his book and play: the plot is simplistic, reliant on cliches, and pieced together from plagiarized bits of better writing (which Brian claims to have never seen or read) and it's easy for idiots like Peter and Chris to follow the plot. Stewie even tells Brian that everybody who laughs or even criticizes his writing skills is a reminder that Brian will never be a good writer.Stewie: You tried to destroy it, didn't you? I KNEW my play was good! Just like I knew your play was a mediocre patchwork of hackneyed ideas and tired clichés. You have no idea how hard it was to sit in that theater with all those braying hyenas. Couldn't you tell something was up when Chris and the fat man could follow the plot? I mean, it took Peter a year to figure out Stuart Little.Brian: It's still a good play!Stewie: It's filled with terrible double entendres, puns, and stolen bits. There's a line in there from Seinfeld!Brian: I never saw that episode!Stewie: I have a voice. Do you understand that? A writer needs a voice, and I have one. You don't. Your play panders to the lowest common denominator, Brian. And it doesn't even do that well.Brian: SHUT UP!Stewie: May every person who laughs at your sophomoric effort be a reminder of your eternal mediocrity, and pierce your heart like a knife.
- The Scapegoat: After Stewie so effectively denounces his writing, Brian lashes out at a squirrel in the yard.Brian: You suck! And your play sucks, too!
Squirrel: This isn't about me, is it?
Brian: No. And I'm sorry, but no one can ever know that. [kills the squirrel] - Shout-Out: Brian reading Stewie's play breaking down crying and letting the papers fly out of his hands while Symphony No. 29 plays in the background is a reference to Amadeus when Salieri reads through Mozart's music.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Stewie accuses Brian of plagiarizing a line of dialogue from Seinfeld for his play, Brian's immediate response is "I never saw that episode" — even though Stewie never said which episode it was stolen from.
- Take Our Word for It: While we're told Stewie's play is the most amazing piece of literature in decades, we never actually hear and see any of it.
- Take That!: Stewie invites Brian to go out with him, Woody Allen, and his "daughter-wife."
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After a depressed Brian confesses that Stewie's play helped make him think of his own failings as a writer and how he might not accomplish anything significant before dying, Stewie points out to him that that is his true voice and that he should write from that. Stewie also deliberately sabotages his own play to make Brian feel better and like he still has time to do better than him.
- Title Drop: Twice in the same play. "A Passing Fancy" begins with the husband getting a part in the eponymous play and ends with the line "All this time, I was the passing fancy" as the wife leaves her husband.
