“Escape from Pearl Bailey” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!.
Plot summary
Steve gets back together with his ex-girlfriend Debbie, making his friends jealous. Meanwhile, Lisa Silver is running for Student Council President, though she is clearly corrupt. Steve tries to persuade Debbie to run against her, which she accepts after learning that Lisa spent the school’s money for fetal pigs on hiring a Hollywood hairdresser and a live buffalo. Steve works extremely hard to get support, neglecting his friends. Though Debbie seems to be winning, someone posts a slam page and she loses. Steve determines that it was Lisa and her friends and executes an elaborate revenge scheme financed by pawning Toshi’s family katana.
Using a mask, Steve exacts his revenge on the cool girls in a parody of Navajo Joe. On Amy, he has a buffalo excrete on her, with laxative; Janet, having her leg filled with fat during a liposuction procedure; and last Lisa, giving her infections by giving her teddy bear to a prostitute and then letting her smother the bear in her sleep.
However, Debbie is horrified at his actions and dumps him. Steve later learns that his friends posted the smear page, as he was spending a lot of time with Debbie and they wanted him back. At this point, Lisa and all the cool kids learn that Steve was the culprit (having traced his purchase of the mask) try to beat up Steve and his friends (Principal Lewis permits this as Janet happens to be his own daughter).
As Steve and his friends try to escape from the school, Principal Lewis abuses his power and makes an announcement to the various cliques in the school to catch them, offering a $500 reward. They get past some of the cliques, but when they stumble into Goth territory, Debbie tells her friends to let Steve go, understanding why he did what he did. But her Goth friends were going to turn Steve’s friends to the popular people, so Steve decide to go with them but Debbie decides to let them all go. Debbie and the Goths distract the other cliques by playing “Love will tear us apart” by Joy Division and dancing in their way.
They make it outside, but the cool kids cut them off from Francine and they get cornered in the school bus. Knowing that their time is near, Steve tells his friends that they will take some of them down with them. They leap out of the bus to go out in a blaze of glory; as the screen freeze-frames, we hear Steve shouting “We’re not taking any of them with us!” alongside the sound of several punches landing at once.
Cultural references
- Right after the popular girls call Debbie a fat cow, Tim Gunn appears to offer fashonable clothes to help.
- The scene where the Goth kids allow Steve and his friends to escape (”You shall not pass!”) is a reference to Gandalf’s confrontation with the Balrog in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
- The Goth kids dance to “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division.
- Snot compares the smell of the stairway taken over by the Goths to a Depeche Mode concert.
- One of the Goths mentioned buying a dagger on eBay.
- When Debbie refers to a “thirty year old TV show”, the scene cuts to three nerds in the audience, wearing the costumes of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth incarnations of the Doctor, as well as K-9. Technically, “thirty years” refers only to the approximate American broadcast history of Doctor Who – the series was first broadcast from 1963-1989, and was revived in 2005.
- One of the PBHS cliques is the The Red-Headed League, an allusion to a Sherlock Holmes story about a phoney club made up exclusively of red-haired men.
- Steve’s line “You want to get nuts, come on. Let’s get nuts!” is a reference to the 1989 film Batman.
- The audience is shown Steve taking revenge on the girls in chapters à la Kill Bill, even going as far as Toshi giving Steve a Samurai sword for his “Holy Revenge”, instead Steve sells it.
- In the scene where Steve plans to plot revenge against Lisa, he apparently pulls out some dynamite and tells his friends ‘This is my promotional lunchbox from that Cartoon Network show about that bundle of dynamite that lives with that talking burrito.’, he is most likely referencing the bomb scare in Boston caused by a failed promotion for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.
- The way the boys have to escape the school, by passing all the school gangs, is similar to the way the Warriors escape to their turf by passing all other gangs’ turfs in the film The Warriors, and also features the same song as in that film’s escape scenes. The principal’s announcements over the PA system reference the commentary provided by a radio DJ in the film. The escape sequence can also be seen as an allusion to the film Escape from New York, which is referenced in the episode title. It is also very similar to Cleavon Little’s character ‘Super Soul’ from the 1971 movie Vanishing Point.
- The pawn shop where Steve pawns the samurai sword to get the cash to fund his revenge plot is the same shop from Pulp Fiction. In an ironic twist, it is the sword that causes the undoing of the nefarious shop keeper and his biker friend in the basement of the shop in the movie.
- The mask worn by Steve when he takes his revenge is a reference to the film Navajo Joe.
- Steve makes a reference to James Cameron’s Titanic, to which he admits after the phrase.
- When Steve and his friends are escaping through the bleachers, it mirrors one of the final scenes in The Faculty.
- The final scene in which Steve and his friends take on the school in a fight resembles the end of season 5 of the television show Angel. The final freeze-frame is a reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
- Just before Steve comes to inform her of the success of his revenge plots, Debbie was standing in front of her locker and whistling Frederic Chopin’s Marche Funèbre (funeral march).
Trivia
- As implied by Stan in this episode (”Nice of Steve to acknowledge us this week, even if it was just this once.”), the rest of the Smith family (save Steve) have no real part in this episode and only appear in the living room scene. Francine, however, appears twice (in the living room scene and near the end when she is in her SUV reading a romance novel called “Swept Away.”) Also, Roger, Hayley, and Klaus have no lines in this episode making Stan, Francine and Steve the only characters to appear and speak in this episode of American Dad!.
- When Steve told his friends that they didn’t have girlfriends, Toshi mentions having a wife for a while. This is a reference to the second season episode, “Of Ice and Men”.
- Debbie’s last name is revealed in this episode as Hyman.
- Both this and the preceding Family Guy episode contained jokes involving a young woman with her leg deformed in a mishap and simulated intercourse with a teddy bear.