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Escape from Pearl Bailey

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Steve and his friends plot their Escape

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.


Pulling Double Booty

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Hayley and stan's Body Double at the Beach

Pulling Double Booty” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!.

Plot summary

Hayley and Jeff head to the mall to shop, which later turns into a disaster, as Jeff breaks up with Hayley, causing her to go on a destructive rampage that has happened every time a boyfriend broke up with her (her first known one involved killing a pregnant hamster). She is stopped by Stan with 19 tranquilizer darts as a result. The police inform the Smiths that one more of these tantrums and Hayley will go to jail. One night Stan excuses himself from bed on the pretense of feeding Klaus (who shouldn’t eat, as he is having a blood test in the morning). Francine follows Stan and is horrified to see him in bed with their daughter, the two passionately making out. She passes out at the sight of this.

However, it isn’t Stan–it’s Stan’s CIA body double, Bill from It’s Good to Be Queen. Hayley met Bill when she saw him eating lunch in the CIA cafeteria and threw a salad in his face, thinking he was her dad (who had just ruined a potential date by airlifting the boy Hayley was talking to). Stan realizes he’s perfect for Hayley. As Hayley states that if Bill dumped her, she’d kill him, burn down the neighborhood, and rape Roger (for starters), Francine must try her best to be supportive (though she reflexively vomits profusely whenever Bill and Hayley kiss). However, when Bill tries to seduce Francine after Stan gives a detailed description of her sex drive, Stan first dispatches Bill, then decides to go on a date with Hayley, thinking that if “Bill” annoys her enough, she will dump him, and there won’t be any rampages and no jail time. Unfortunately, Stan assumes Hayley merely wants to kiss, but she wants to go “all the way”.

To offend her enough to break up with him, he makes her carry all the bags, belches in her face, and even suggests picking up an attractive diner waitress to take back to their room. None of this bothers her (in fact, it rather excites her). Stan takes her to the middle of a forest, where she starts complaining about how her dad never says “I love you” to her. Stan, still as Bill, tells her that her father does loves her, which seems to be all that Hayley wanted to begin with. However, the ruse is exposed when Hayley decides to call Stan and when he answers Hayley beings to burn down the forest they were hiking in.

Meantime, Steve gets a summer job sex-typing baby chickens, which he is uncannily good at, and takes Roger with him. Roger is upset because he thought he and Steve were going to have a memorable summer vacation, not spend the time working. When he learns the male chicks are being made into slurry, Steve rescues as many as he can and keeps them as pets in the toolshed. He takes care of them and soon raises them to young adulthood. Roger kidnaps the chickens and holds a cockfight to gin up extra cash. Steve makes a deal with the alien: they fight, and winner keeps the roosters. After a brief skirmish, Steve frees the whole brood, who run giddily into the street and are fatally struck by cars. As Steve mourns his loss, Roger clocks him from behind with a folding chair.

Phantom of the Telethon

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

Stan at the C.I.A Telethon

Phantom of the Telethon” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!.

Plot summary

Stan learns that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can no longer afford torture devices as the Democrats are shifting money to teaching inner city children to read. While Stan tries to come up with ideas for revenue-raising inventions, Roger suggests that the CIA hold a telethon, which Stan says is a stupid idea. The next day however, Stan then suggests a telethon and takes all the credit and doesn’t admit that it was Roger’s idea, despite his protests that it was. At the telethon, Roger becomes “The Phantom” and wreaks havoc to force Stan to admit the truth. Roger sabotages the teleprompter, cuts down stage lights, crushes Jeff Fischer with a fishing boat, cuts the motorbike brakes of Sergei’s Russian circus bear, and even kidnaps Steve and dresses him up as Christine Daae. Unfortunately, he also unleashes The Common Gardensnake of Ramond, a terrorist who plants enough C-4 to destroy the CIA building and even rigs the exits so no one can leave. Stan “negotiates” with the Snake by humiliating himself in a skit that bashes Israel, but the terrorist had no intention of disabling the bomb. Stan decides to accept Roger’s help, who pounds the terrorist with his recently bought mini keyboard (he intended to buy a pipe organ). This gives Stan an idea and makes a plea on the air for donations so they can torture him in revealing the disarm code; once the counter reaches one million dollars, Stan tortures the terrorist and Roger disables the bomb. Unfortunately, Stan decides not to confess the telethon was Roger’s idea so as punishment, Roger beats him to a pulp.

Cultural references

  • The main plot is similar to The Phantom of the Opera, however the plotline of a creator taking revenge on someone who stole the idea can also be seen in the 1943 and 1962 version of the story, as well as the Brian De Palma satire, Phantom of the Paradise.
  • Stan pokes fun at conspiracy theories that the CIA faked the moon landing and planned the JFK assassination.
  • The terrorists nickname “garden snake” is a parody of how many criminals have nicknames that relate to various deadly snakes (i.e. Viper, Cobra, Python)

The One That Got Away (American Dad!)

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Roger in his Outfit

The One That Got Away” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!, first aired on October 5, 2008.

Plot

When Roger returns home, the Smiths chastises him for taking things from them and disappearing all day in one of his persona’s, which they presume to be an inferiority complex. Afterwords he discovers that someone has maxed out his credit card, he is certain it is identify theft and is determined to bring down the crook. He finds the crook to be Sidney Huffman, a lovable bible maker. After playing “Death Wish” for a few days and dishing out some street justice, he goes to Sidney’s apartment to torch it. However, as he is pouring out gasoline, Roger finds a picture of Sidney and discovers that he is Sidney.

A flashback turns to Sidney, who was enjoying his life but finds that Roger had been misprinting Bibles (transvestites who poop mozzerella dinosaurs), destroyed (and raped) his garden and told his girlfriend Judy Panawits that he has diseases. Sidney knew there was only one way to get rid of Roger — order a hit on him. At that moment, Roger is nearly killed by the hitman hired by Sidney. Klaus advises Roger to pretend to be Sidney and call off the hit. But the hitman requires the password just in case Sidney wanted to call it off so Roger goes to Judy to ask about his favourite words. Unfortunately, the hitman comes in with his daughters and spots Roger. He hides in a change room, overhearing that the hitman is threatening to kill Judy. Roger thinks to abandon her when Sidney appears in a mirror, who chastises Roger. Roger then begs his alter ego to give him the password but Sidney refuses to so, seeing that Roger needs to pay. Roger informs Sidney that they are one and the same, showing the black gloves that were separated, which Sidney remembers is when he met Judy. Roger then remembers everything. He wanted a pair of black gloves so badly that he pretended to be a sober person to get close to the Judy’s key to a case. After buying a necklace (which cost much more than the pair of gloves) he snatched the key and got the gloves but the manager blamed Judy for losing it. Roger then snaps and become Sidney and saves her career, developing MPD in the process as he was unaware of being Sidney until the beginning of the episode. Sidney gives Roger the password, which is “Password 1″. Roger then stabs Sidney (who comes out of the mirror) and throws away his girlfriend. But seeing her cry, he decides to stick with her. Roger than tells Judy that he’s a drunk and that he has no genitals, and then she tells him that “she” has both sexual reproductive organs.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Smith family gets sucked into a mean game of Simon, while Klaus feels ignored. Unfortunately, they get addicted to it, not moving except to touch the pieces and eventually find themselves sitting in stains of week-old urine. This forces Klaus to use a smoke bomb to make it disappear, along with himself (something that Roger has tried repeatedly throughout the episode, only to fall asleep each time). The Smith family is overjoyed that Klaus has freed them from the “spell”. Another puff of smoke appears, revealing a strange sea creature that Klaus slays from the inside with a sword. Klaus claims to have been gone for sixty years from his perspective, and that he was crowned king of whatever place is was he had transported to.

Choosy Wives Choose Smith

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Stan cooks Francine a meal

“Choosy Wives Choose Smith” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!, set to air on November 2, 2008. The title refers to the classic Jif slogan Choosy Moms Choose Jif.

Plot

After Stan boasts that he has obtained his pilot’s license, Francine begs him not to fly small aircraft. She reveals that she was engaged to another man named Travis who disappeared in a small aircraft before she met Stan. After he reappeared, Francine was already engaged to Stan. Realizing that his wife may have only settled, Stan tracks down Travis and finds he is a wealthy, successful cowboy. He sets up a dinner between Francine and Travis, but Francine repeatedly states she loves Stan and did not settle. Though Stan is satisfied, Roger says that he must be sure (as Stan is the father of Francine’s children), so they fake crashing into the ocean, when they were actually hiding at a remote CIA island. His plan is to disappear for two months and see if Francine remains loyal until he returns, having installed cameras throughout the house to make sure. However, a tsunami hits the island on their second day, destroying everything and reducing it to a tiny desert with only a palm tree. After nearly three months, Stan (who overcomes his fear of sea gulls during this time) discovers that Roger floats effortlessly in water and they are rescued by a passing cruiser. When they return, Francine seems to have moved on, with Travis living with her but then reveals that she easily discovered the cameras and hoped to make him jealous. However, she is immediately taken aback when Stan reveals a tsunami destroyed all his equipment and he became stranded for real. He is convinced, though, that she did not settle for him. Travis is horrified, as Francine didn’t sleep with him and leaves, saying they are meant for each other (insultingly, though the Smiths take it as a compliment).

Meanwhile, Steve takes up the cello to impress Lindsay Cooliage. On the way to practice, he finds an adorable cat on the opposite side of the street. While crossing the road, the cat is hit by a car. When a horrified Steve runs to the animal’s side, he is clawed severely about the face. Steve’s pal Snot says the cat was just frightened, and even manages to pet the cat without being attacked. When Steve attempts to make amends, however, the cat–whom he has named Simon–continues to scratch his face in an increasingly brutal running gag. Steve abandons the cat in a huff. However, he has a dream in which he and Simon are playing complacently together but are then separated, which he takes as a sign.

After his recital, he spots a limping Simon at the auditorium door and presumes that the cat wanted to be with him as he seemingly dies. But he then realizes that he is sleeping, and the cat begins tearing at him. He beats it up several times (including smashing it with his cello until it’s destroyed and dropping multiple elbow drops). The cat is psychotic and brutal, and keeps coming back for more–including posing as Roger’s new toupee (a replacement for a gull named Ira which Roger had befriended back on the island) just to get a last crack at Steve.

Cultural References

  • Roger attempts to escape from the island by tying a bunch of seagulls together like James and the insects from James and the Giant Peach only to fail miserably.
  • This may also be a reference to the metafiction story The Tales of the Black Freighter, a comic within the Watchmen universe, where a man tries to escape an island after being stranded there by a shipwreck by tying together the bloated corpses of his shipmates. Tales also has a scene where the protagonist eats a raw seagull, much like Stan does.
  • The song in the dream sequence with Steve and Simon is I’m Walking This Road Because You Stole My Car (Don’t Go) by Fascinoma.
  • The scene where Stan is watching the TV monitors showing the hidden cameras throughout the house is a possible reference to the game Night Trap.

Stan mentions Ritchie Valens’ plane, and “how he would have survived if his plane had just been a little smaller” a reference to The Day the Music Died.


1600 Candles

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

The Episode Promo Image

1600 Candles” is the fourth season episode premiere of the animated series American Dad!. It premiered on September 28, 2008, and is the first episode to feature the new opening sequence. This episode is rated TV-14

Plot

As Klaus shows off his new hamster ball filled with water to enable him to move around the house, Roger is excited to see that the family is setting up for his 1,600th birthday party, a milestone for his people. But Steve runs down stairs and reveals he is going through puberty. Stan and Francine are shocked because Hayley’s puberty didn’t go well for them, as she had wild mood swings for every single development. Steve begins to show off his puberty to his friends and across the school. Steve later asks Lisa Silver out to meet her at Macy’s. Francine, not wishing to go through the same trauma again, then goes to the CIA, bribes the lab scientists with brownies and injects Steve with a needle to stop him from aging further for at least a few more years. However, the serum makes him a toddler all over again.

This angers Steve and he asks who did it to him. Francine confesses she injected him with it, but Stan distracts Steve with cartoons. Steve goes to mall with Francine where he was supposed to meet Lisa to buy her a prom dress. Lisa is thinking that Steve’s appearance is a joke and that he is Steve’s nephew. That night, Stan injects him with a needle, also from the CIA, in order to settle Francine’s mistake and to make Steve an adult, to skip Steve’s puberty instead of holding it off. However, much like the first attempt, the new serum turns Steve into an old man. Steve is just as furious as before, saying he has pubic hair, but it is white. Stan says he will head back to lab and get an antidote, distracting Steve yet again with the television, this time with The Weather Channel.

Klaus tells Steve that Lisa called to meet him again. Steve comes up with a story that he travels back in time from 80 years into the future. He manages to meet with Lisa and tell her the story, but all it does is confuse her and cause her to leave the date as he falls asleep before Francine finds him. Stan comes home with the antidote to turn Steve back into a fourteen year old. They start talking about the bad side of puberty, and Steve, scared, runs aways. Roger drops Steve off at a bus stop and Steve leaves on a bus with an old woman and reveals he doesn’t want to be put in another situation where it involves his age.

Francine is looking for Steve until she and Stan find out Roger dropped off Steve so he can celebrate his birthday party. Steve, who is now in a retirement home, gets a call from Stan to come back to the house. But Steve wants to stay because he enjoys his new life and threatens to kill himself, making Francine and Stan feel guilty for changing the most important years of his life. Francine and Stan find Steve and they give him the shot just in time for the dance. He finally dances with Lisa, but a drunk enraged Roger pulls down his pants to show he only has one pubic hair, ruining his moment. The bullies then give him a swirlie and Stan and Francine reveal that puberty isn’t perfect for anyone. The pubic hair from Steve floats across town until Roger comes home from the dance. Roger is upset that Steve stole his thunder and nobody remembered his birthday. However, in a parody of the ending scene of “Sixteen Candles”, Klaus is shown with a birthday cake reading, “1600″ and a single candle. Roger says that his wish came true, but the pubic hair lands in the cake and Roger ends the episode by saying, “I hate Steve so much”.

Cultural references

  • At the Old folks home, Steve and two other old men are talking about their past regrets, ending with Steve saying, “Im Still a Virgin”. To this one of the men says, “Dude, you’re a virgin?” and the other, “Roadtrip!” in a parody of The 40 Year Old Virgin.
  • The title and ending scene are references to the film Sixteen Candles.
  • The final moments of the episode also lampoon one of the iconic images from the film Forrest Gump. In that movie’s opening and closing scenes, a bird’s feather flutters in the wind above the town as the film’s musical score plays. Meanwhile, this episode of American Dad! concludes with the image of Steve’s lone pubic hair floating around Langley Falls in a similar manner (and with the same music playing) before landing on Roger’s birthday cake, much to the alien’s chagrin.

One Little Word (American Dad!)

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Stan can't say NO

One Little Word” is a fourth season episode of the animated series American Dad!, which aired on October 19, 2008.

Plot

Stan wishes to become Bullock’s “Number One” and see the Executive Lounge. His opportunity arrives when Bullocks demotes his previous Number One, Jackson, for not agreeing to buy opera tickets. However, Bullock needs him on an extremely important mission and leaves his adopted son, Avery Junior (shortened to AJ), in the care of Francine. Stan soon learns that Bullock is looking for an overweight Asian woman that accepts his age. Unfortunately, any woman he finds runs at the sight of AJ. Even after a long time of searching (in a large variety of places), they are unsuccessful and Francine gets fed up caring for AJ, as Roger gets jealous of him and begins behaving like a four-year old (Four and a half, he says) and takes his anger out on Steve and the house.

Stan leads a team to retrieve Bullock’s wife, Miriam, who was being held captive by terrorists in Fallujah and remained there as Bullock doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. Unfortunately, when he brings her back, he informs Bullock that she’s been brainwashed into thinking she’s an anti-American terrorist and Bullock refuses to see her. Worse, she kidnaps AJ and claims she went to the Middle East, but is really up in the attic. Stan and Francine inform her that AJ is her adopted son, snapping her to normal. Unfortunately, just after Miriam returns to her Western beliefs, Bullock reveals had just got his new mistress Coco, an obese Asian woman, and doesn’t want Miriam finding out. To remedy the problem, Bullock has Coco hide in the Smiths’ home. Francine gets roped into the annoying ordeal and when her romantic Valentine’s Day get-away is threatened, she lays down the law for Stan to say “No” to his boss.

Though Stan claims he refused Bullock, he secretly hides Coco in the cabin across Fraser lake from his, caving into her every demand without Francine’s knowledge under the presence of collecting firewood. Meanwhile, Roger, having grown attached to AJ, kidnaps him and shows him his new crystal spider; unfortunately, when Roger shows AJ his favorite one, the infant breaks off a leg. Enraged, Roger attempts to plunge AJ into Fraser lake in a car, but Stan manages to stop him in time. To save the day (while revealing that, for once, he had quietly paid attention during the episode), Roger calls Bullock as AJ’s kidnapper, directing him to Coco’s cabin to where AJ is. However, Stan’s preoccupiedness results in Francine feeling neglected. She follows Stan to Cabin 2, where they find Coco and AJ, just as the Bullocks arrive. Coco reveals to Miriam that she’s Avery’s mistress and, due to bordom, leaves. Miriam, angry at her husband’s betrayal (and even more so after she learned that Coco arrived after she did), does a mock of his proposal by shooting him in the leg and takes AJ. When Bullock pleads to be taken to a hospital, Stan finally decides to say no at the worst possible time for Bullock, over Francine’s protesting and kisses her. Bullock replaces Stan with Dick as his new Number One, who had been across the lake, molesting an unconscious Roger.

Cultural references

  • This episode is a semi-sequel to “Four Little Words”, which introduced Avery, Jr.
  • This is the first time that both American Dad and Family Guy have made the same reference on the same air date. This and the episode Road to Germany both reference Scarlett Johansson.
  • The position of “Number One” is Patrick Stewart (voice of Avery Bullock) providing a callback to his role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard often referred to his first officer William T. Riker as “Number One”.
  • A Furry convention is seen in this episode.
  • Bullock’s wife is referenced in several other episodes
  • The episode aired to 7.68 million viewers beating King of the Hill on that night.