FOX Sunday Animation Domination (11.9.08)

The Husband:

The Simpsons 20.5 “Dangerous Curves”

“Why do married women always have husbands?” – Alberto

Puritanical fans of The Simpsons tend to get a bit snippy when the writers try to retool Homer and Marge’s past, as evidenced by the online hoopla generated as a result of last season’s 1990s grunge-centered episode and many others throughout the show’s second decade of existence. For some reason, the fans like to hold onto the show’s early inferences of their relationship, the specific decade/era in which they met and wooed each other, and are shut off from any variation. The thing is, The Simpsons has always played with time, and just like the James Bond series, everyone is perpetually the same age and act as though whatever year the episode is airing in, that is the show’s present era. The backgrounds and themes change, but the characters never do. So when we are presented with another one of Homer & Marge’s flashbacks stating that they were still dating only twenty years ago, it doesn’t bother me that technically in the “real world,” the Simpsons were already a broadcasted family on The Tracey Ullman Show.

In other words, get over yourself, because the show has always fucked with timelines. That’s the entire joke.

In three parallel stories, we see H&M (whoa…so it’s Homer & Marge that started that store!) in various stages of their relationship; 20 years earlier during their let’s-never-get-married-so-we-don’t-destroy-our-own-love when they first meet the Flanderses, five years earlier when they nearly destroy their marriage due to near-sex with other people they meet at a party, and the present where they return to the scene of both of these memories – a cabin motel – while on a family trip and discover the secrets and lies they kept from each other five years earlier.

While this episode couldn’t really seem to muster up much energy and ingenuity upon jumping through time – in other words, it was more clunky than seamless – nearly as well as something like How I Met Your Mother (see such episodes as The Platinum Rule, Game Night or First Time In New York), it still did a very good job tugging at the heartstrings, letting us know that, just like in politics and American history, marriage has to be based on at least a few lies.

King Of The Hill 13.5 “No Bobby Left Behind”

“I got that disease where you wake up strange places drunk.” – School Principal

This week, Tom Landry High Middle School focused on a very important social issue, one that we all know about, one that is very controversial and one that we all seem to have an opinion on – the “No Child Left Behind Act.” When the high school finally learns what this act actually means – no, teacher, it has nothing to do literally forgetting where children are – they worry about their impending test score, so they bring in a child education specialist who decides to put all the troublemaking/lazy students in a “special class,” which would make them exempt from taking said government test. Treated like kindergartners and enjoying it, the students forget what school is really about, and only with Hank’s intervention – no son of his should ever be called “special”! – do they get reinstated as normal students. Even with their music montage of learning and studying, though, the students score lower than ever before – leaving the principal out of a job (hence the above post-fired quote) – but that is just the way of the world sometimes. Good test scores need to be earned.

As with any good King Of The Hill episode, the social implications are put front-and-center, allowing you to ponder the pros and cons of any truly American issue. The “No Child Left Behind Act,” in theory, is meant to be a force of good, but like many of Bush’s policies over the last eight years, good intentions don’t get you everywhere. It’s so easy to get around the act through loopholes and deceit that the short-sightedness of the act is always on full display. You’re worried that your school will test low and thus get less funding/attention? Drop the lowest-ranking students. Problem solved, and now there’s an even bigger problem in its place.

Education is a tough topic with no easy solutions, but when all is said and done, the best thing for a student to do is to care about his schoolwork, his homework and his growing brain, and that’s a good of a start to fixing the problem as any.

Family Guy 6.5 “The Man With Two Brians”

Abraham Lincoln comments on his neighbor’s overgrown front lawn.

Neighbor: Yeah, I used to have a guy for that. Dick.”

Upon trying to save Peter from a Jackass-inspired stunt – he’s not the only one, as my friends and I had our own shitty Jackass wannabe do-stupid-shit-and-film-it group by the name of TOFU, a.k.a. Total Operation Fuck-Up – Brian strains his back and almost drowns, making everybody realize that he is getting old. Eight years old, in fact, which is 56 in dog years. So the Griffins decide to get another dog, New Brian, who much like Robot 1-X in the Futurama episode “Obsoletely Fabulous” is a perfect companion, but Brian takes a page out of Bender’s book and is nothing but jealous for the seemingly perfect dog.

Yes, but how perfect is New Brian? Let’s list the ways:

• He wakes Peter and Lois up by gently playing a flute
• He plays guitar and makes up songs about farts solely for Peter’s amusement
• He tells Meg that she is beautiful, and then presents her with her first deodorant stick
• He loves Meg and Chris’ hats. A lot.

Brian tries to get the family back on his side by showing footage of him as a puppy – not sure if this is a continuity error, since Peter first found Brian, homeless, when he was grown up, and I doubt that Brian had footage of himself from his pre-Griffin days – but the Griffins have their attention completely on New Brian. So Brian moves out, first to stay with Cleveland, then Quagmire.

Stewie, meanwhile, begins to really miss Brian (Stewie to Brian: “You were my douche”) and then discovers a horrible truth – New Brian has been humping his Rupert doll. So…yeah…Stewie viciously murders New Brian, throws him in a trash can and writes a fake suicide note.

(I think the last time Stewie was this violent was pre-cancellation. Welcome back, evil one.)

Another good, old-fashioned episode that didn’t go too over-the-top with pop culture references – and when they did it was something funny like Peter stupidly singing the theme song to Greatest American Hero – and no lame extended joke in sight.

Oh, there was a very lame pun in the cutaway about the awkwardness of a crocodile at an alligator convention, but my wife seemed to think it was the funniest thing in the goddamn world, so I’ll give it to the writers for spreading their humor around a little bit.

American Dad 4.5 “Escape From Pearl Bailey”

“It smells like Depeche Mode.” — Steve

I’ve mentioned before that I really love the Steve-centered stories, and this week was no exception. With the rest of the family taking a break for a week — one of the many perks of doing a sitcom via animation instead of live action — Steve helps his girlfriend Debbie (did not realize that she was voiced by Lizzy Caplan until this week) as campaign manager for her bid as class president. Unfortunately, the cheerleaders, whose top girl is the incumbent, prey on Debbie’s very large size and her other non-normal deficiencies and cost her the election.

Patriotism hurts!

Steve, vowing revenge, takes cues from both Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction — mostly the former — and humiliates each of the guilty cheerleaders one-by-one. The first cheerleader, he gets a buffalo to fill cover her and her convertible with poop. The second, he injects her thigh with liposuction fat. The third, he gives her herpes via lending her teddy bear to a prostitute. (Sorry, AD, I hate to call out shows on joke-stealing, but South Park did something very similar about seven years ago.) Debbie, upon learning of Steve’s horrible vengeance, decides to break up with him, as she never asked him to do any of these things.

Ah, but that “slam site,” the webpage that cost Debbie the election, was actually created by Steve’s friends who were pissed that he was ignoring them.

“They’re making puberty!” — Barry

Just as Steve makes up with his friends, word gets out that Steve was behind all the attacks, so the school turns on him and the rest of the episode turns into a miniature, high school version of the totally awesome movie The Warriors, with gangs replaced on this show by geeks, stoners and goths. (Seriously, check that movie out. Brilliant 80s dystopian badassery.) The principal even gets in on the action, being the second TV character last week to be a version of The Warriors‘ Lynne Thigpen character, guiding the predators to the prey via the PA system. (The first was Whoopi Goldberg on being a funky DJ on Life On Mars.) The school finally catches up with Steve and the gang, leading to a final Butch Cassidy freeze frame that lets us know, in no uncertain terms, how Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really fared against the Bolivian cavalry. (That is to say, not so well.)

For some reason, I really enjoy Steve’s non-sequiturs more than is probably necessary, but I feel for the kid and his neverending quest for poonanny, and am always glad to see actor Curtis Armstrong in anything, even if he’s just a voice. (He voices Snot, a take-off on his portrayal as Booger in the Revenge of the Nerds movies.) And according to Wikipedia, he’s a widely respected expert on the music of Harry Nilsson, which is something none of us really need to know, but that’s still pretty damn cool.

I know that this Sunday we’re going to see a Hayley-centered plot — thanks, Wikipedia, again, for telling me that her character’s full name is Haley Dream Smasher Smith — so I’m very glad that this season has made an effort to give each character play of focus, even if that means other characters getting the shaft for a short period of time.

I still feel bad for Klaus, though, who has only really been focused upon in two episodes — the James Bond takeoff and the one where he inhabits the body of a black man.

 

FOX Animation Domination (11.2.08)

The Husband:

Here it is, another installment of Fox’s Animation DOOMMMMINAAAAAAATION!

The Simpsons 20.4 “Treehouse of Horror XIX”

The Treehouse of Horror episodes always tend to be my least favorite of the season save for a few good early ones – Homer’s one inspired by The Raven as well as the aliens taking over human bodies and running for president – so I never really go into them with any real expectations. The jokes are far too telegraphed and the stories never really seem to go anywhere, but I’ll admit that this week I found a few very shiny gems amidst all the bullshit.

In the first story, “UNTITLED ROBOT PARODY,” Bart buys Lisa a Malibu Stacey car for Christmas, much to her surprise – last year he gave her a box of his burps – but soon it is discovered that the toy car is actually a Transformer who turns all of her toys and all the Simpson appliances into Transformers as well, intent on doing battle with their enemies on our soil. Marge convinces the robots not to fight each other, so instead they band up and enslave all of humanity. *yawn*

The best line of the night, though, was in this third.

“Merry Christmas, dad. We bought you three more minutes of oxygen.” – Homer to Grandpa

The second story, “HOW TO GET AHEAD IN DEAD-VERTISING,” opened with a great Mad Men title sequence parody, which while very impressive will probably go over the heads of many Simpsons viewers. The story itself concerns Homer, who during a scuffle accidentally kills Krusty the Klown, piquing the interest of a group of ad men who prey on the image rights of dead celebrities (a different clause than living celebrities). They hire Homer to kill of celebrities one-by-one (George Clooney, Prince and Neil Armstrong) and give him a cut of the advertising profits. Up in Celebrity Heaven (which is different from Regular Heaven), all the dead are pissed and decide to stage a revolution back on Earth. John Lennon’s battle cry?

“All we are saying is let’s eat some brains.”

On Earth, the ghosts/zombies attack, but just before they perish the humans want to know what the one true religion is, to which Krusty replies, “It’s a mix of voodoo and Methodism.” It’s good to know where cartoons stand on that question, as South Park has more than once proclaimed that the one true religion is Mormonism, and Heaven involves spending a lot of time making shit out of empty egg cartons.

You eat the unborn???????

In the third story, The Simpsons take It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and turn it into “IT’S THE GRAND PUMPKIN, MILHOUSE,” replacing Linus with Milhouse. As with the original tale, all of the children are celebrating Christmas except for Milhouse, who is in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Grand Pumpkin to rise, which gets him a lot of guff.

“Your god is wrong.” – Ralph

When Milhouse’s tears mix with the soil, the Grand Pumpkin rises from the Earth, but when he finds out that we humans carve pumpkins and “roast the unborn” (i.e. pumpkin seeds), it goes on a destructive spree, eating humans and trying to kill the children. Lisa manages to get Milhouse to resurrect another mythical being, a giant turkey, who kills the Grand Pumpkin, only to turn on the children when it finds out what exactly we eat on Thanksgiving.

All in all, I’m just waiting for a regular Simpsons episode next week, and I’ll continue each year to basically ignore their Halloween episode. Does anybody still like these?

King Of The Hill 13.4 “Lost In My Space”

It’s Hank against the Internet. Noticing that a long-time propane customer is buying from a competing service, Hank discovers that it’s because the other service has been advertising and communicating with customers via MySpace. Hank, as usual an ignorant technophobe, does not see this change as posing a problem to Strickland Propane.

“Propane may be a gas, but it’s like a rock.” – Hank

Soon they are losing business, so Mr. Strickland promotes their lazy young female accountant, Donna, to a position as the assistant manager in charge of new media, as she is very knowledgeable about social networking site, viral videos and blogs. Soon, Strickland Propane’s website contains videos of its employees doing very peculiar things – humping propane containers, being drunk at parties, etc. – in order to gain a following and ultimately big business.

Hank is not a happy camper at this change of events – he’s the only assistant manager, dammit – but Peggy tries to inform him of the wonders of the Internet and the anonymity it provides.

“I’m Ted Danson online. People will tell Ted Danson anything. Kahn is manic-depressive.” – Peggy

At work, Hank refuses to blog about his personal issues, and only does so when forced to, simply writing “Donna is an idiot.” Donna’s thousands of MySpace friends gather at Strickland Propane ready to beat up Hank, but they accidentally beat up Mr. Strickland, who quickly fires Donna for all the trouble.

Ah, but Donna has changed the password to their MySpace profile and turns it into an anti-Strickland Propane site, posting angry videos of her screaming, “Death to Strickland Propane.” They can’t track her down, because when she was an employee she never bothered to update the roster, so Hank must read through all of her blogs (once a day for months) to discover her whereabouts. They finally hunt her down to a restaurant and demand that she makes the changes, so she relents and apologizes, weeping that at any job she needs supervision or she’s bound to be a bad employee. Hank educates her that telling everyone all of your thoughts is simply not the traditional way of doing things and that Strickland Propane is a family, and like a family you’re not supposed to share everything.

Once again, another very bizarre moral taught through a very relatable yet seemingly ridiculous premise. It’s a shame that Fox has decided to halt production forever on King Of The Hill – meaning that it will end some time in the 2009-2010 season – but apparently ABC has already shown interest in picking it up when that day comes around. It’d be a shame to lose this show, and I hope it can continue to at least 20 seasons. It deserves it, and I can’t imagine television without new episodes of King Of The Hill.

Family Guy 6.4 “Baby Not On Board”

In a fairly middling but nicely old-fashioned episode – old-fashioned meaning FG before it was canceled (and then returned) – Peter goes to visit Chris at work (welcome back, H. Jon Benjamin as Chris’ boss!) and, after a misunderstanding, threatens to sue the business. Instead, the H. Jon Benjamin character gives Peter a card that gives him one free year of gas, much to Peter’s delight. (One of his ideas? To fly a rocket out of orbit, complete with his goofy giggle that always seems to get me.)

The family decides to use the gas card for better ideas, so they decide to take a road trip to Grand Canyon, but they accidentally leave Stewie behind…but not realizing it until they make a side trip to New York to visit Ground Zero.

“Ground Zero. So this is where the first guy got AIDS.” – Peter

Stewie, home alone, decides to try things he never did before (i.e. that soda-induced sugar rush they showed in every single damned ad for this episode), but then realizes that he needs to work to survive, so he gets a job at McBurgertown. He is ultimately fired for stealing some of the fish sandwiches and vomiting all over the restaurant.

On the road trip, after a very unfunny extended sequence when the whole family sang most of the Bette Midler song “The Rose,” Peter accidentally crashes the car when he sees someone in another car watching television. At the train station, instead of buying tickets he buys some shower curtain rings, leading Lois to completely tell him off. His response, a take-off on John Candy’s big speech near the end of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, gets Chris, in his own response, the biggest laugh of the night.

“Hahaha…movie references.” – Chris

The family finally gets back home, and while the score to Home Alone plays in the background, Stewie realizes that despite all his issues with his family, he knows he can’t live without them.

American Dad 4.4 “Choosy Wives Choose Smith”

Stan is once again questioning Francine’s love for him when he discovers that she was once engaged to be married, but when her fiancé’s tiny plane crashed, she thought he was dead (which ultimately turned out not to be the case) and just continued on with his life, meeting and marrying Stan.

Stan tracks the man down and finds that he is a handsome Montana-based philanthropist cowboy who is just about perfect. He even births calves with John Cougar Mellancamp, who apparently also makes his guitar picks out of sun-dried cow placentas.

Not one to leave anything untested, Stan sets up a situation where he and Roger would take a small plane and fake a crash, wait on a secret CIA island and spy on her via all the cameras he left back at their home.

“I’d rather be acting crazy than feeling crazy.” – Stan

Not long after landing, however, a tsunami destroys the island and the plane, leaving Stan and Roger only a small desert island on which to go slowly insane over 90 long days. While Roger turns a bird into a hat, Stan tries to make a raft out of dead seagulls, then rocks, until he realizes that Roger is actually a great floatation device. They are finally picked up in the middle of the sea by an ocean liner.

When Stan returns home, he sees that Francine has apparently given up hope that Stan was alive and hooked back up with the philanthropist cowboy, but in actuality she was simply leading him on to show Stan that he should never question her love. (Her tipoff that Stan was actually alive? All the huge and very obvious cameras placed around the house.)

In the B-story, Steve decides to take up the cello in order to score with a fellow student.

“Lindsey Coolidge is what we call a cello slut.”

But he has worse things on his mind, as one day when he was playing with a kitten on the street, a car races by and accidentally crushes the cat. Steve tries to help but only gets his face scratched up in the process, so he decides to leave the feisty cat dying on the side of the road.

He soon begins having nightmares about the cat, so he tries again to get the kitty off the road and once again gets attacked for doing so. He can no longer take it.

“Screw you, jerk cat! Son of a whore!” – Steve

This is the point where I have to say that humor involving animal abuse is very much unfunny, unless you do it right. It’s definitely hard to watch a show poke fun at a dying cat when you’re watching television on a couch bookended by two cats of your own. In fact, we have our very own jerk cat, better known by the name of Marlowe Rasputin Douchecat Jerkmeat.

Iz on ur pilowz, prevntn ur sleepz.

At his cello recital, Steve rocks his instrument and gets Lindsey’s attention, but then the kitty drags itself into the auditorium, squirming and groaning, and Steve understands, finally, that the cat wanted to be with Steve when it takes its last dying breath. Ah, but not really, for just as Steve embraces the cat, it attacks once again.

It is here that a fundamental concept of comedy comes through – that no matter how tasteless a joke or a concept, if you take it so over-the-top so as to be completely ridiculous it will become funny on its own. This is why I am surprised at how much I laughed when Steve, while fighting with the cat, decides to body slam it several times until it gives up. Like I said, not funny on its own, but AD is going at making the very tasteless remarkably funny despite the fact that you as a viewer know better than to laugh at something like that.

Back at home, Steve finds that his family has taken in the cat, where it can continue to tear out chunks of Steve’s flesh for years to come.

After last week’s dud, AD is hilarious again, and as I’m always a big fan of Steve-centered stories, I was quite pleased with his shenanigans despite the fact that it revolved around dying cats.

 

FOX Sunday Animation Domination: The Simpsons, King Of The Hill, Family Guy and American Dad (10.19.08)

The Husband:

Here with another round of Sunday night’s Animation Domination is yours truly, The Husband!

The Simpsons 20.3 “Double, Double, Boy In Trouble”

If the writers behind The Simpsons keep up to the level of quality set by this episode – a throwaway but still a goodie – then I’m going to be very pleased with the rest of the season. (Fingers crossed that the Halloween episode doesn’t suck like it always does.)

This week, the Simpsons realize that maybe Bart’s mischief isn’t simply a phase anymore, but an indication of a much bigger problem with his brain in general. (Marge worries about having consumed exactly one drop of champagne during her pregnancy.)

“That kid has become a Dennis-level menace!” – Homer

When Bart ruins Lenny’s party (thrown with the remainder of his lottery money that he won when Homer missed his chance to buy and play the ticket due to Bart interference at the Kwik-E-Mart), he finds that nobody loves him anymore, and is lucky to discover, in the convention hall’s bathroom, a dorky doppelganger by the name of Simon Woosterfield, a bespectacled rich boy who agrees to switch places with Bart, Prince & The Pauper style.

While Simon is mortified by Homer’s behavior (and being found out almost immediately by Lisa), Bart enjoys the rich lifestyle set by Simon’s father (who looks like Bart) and mother (basically a female Milhouse), including the wonders of having a candy corn volcano in his giant room. Not everything is as it seems, though, as Bart discovers that his life is in danger due to the shenanigans of Simon’s inheritance-hungry half-siblings. Brought to Aspen (“Population: White”) in order to suffer death as a result of a ski accident, Bart narrowly escapes death when Simon tells the dastardly plan to the Simpsons. In the end, Bart realizes that his family still loves him despite all the bad things he does.

More great lines from the episode:

• “Stupid shopping list, turning food into work.” – Homer
• “Ha ha! You feel self-conscious!” – Nelson to Marge
• “Stupid kids…think I’m made of hormones.” – Homer threatening to not pay for Bart’s four years of puberty

King Of The Hill 13.3 “Square-Footed Monster”

King Of The Hill has always had very specific, very American problems at the core of its episode, and this one was no exception. When a neighbor dies, her nephew decides to revamp the house a bit and sell it quickly on the market, which is then bought up by Ted, Arlen’s own high-powered businessman. But what he does has the Hank and the gang reeling with anger.

Immediately after buying it, Ted decides to demolish the house and built a shoddy speculation house/McMansion, a poorly designed monstrosity that threatens the peace and happiness of the neighborhood.

“I miss the sun!” – Bill languishes the large shadow the mansion casts over his house

They try to go to the local government, but to no avail. There is nothing technically wrong with the house. Until, that is, a storm comes and pieces of it fly off and attack the houses of Arlen.

“First you take my daylight, now you want my blood?!” – Bill

They decide that in order to save any of their houses, they tear the house down quickly, only to be sued by Ted. In arbitration, Hank’s representative witness declares precedent in what they did, so in the end they win the case, but not before Ted can sell the property to the government, who then builds a power substation in its place. Not to be outdone, Hank gets permission from the lawyer they consulted earlier to build a fake house around the substation, as that is the best they can do.

In essence, they win and lose, and KOTH continues to be a very sly show about cooperation and compromise for the sake of the greater good. The episode wasn’t side-splittingly funny or anything, but I appreciate it highlighting the terrors of McMansions in this confusing time of dropping stocks and real estate nightmares. I doubt any other show would even try to tackle such an issue.

Family Guy 6.3 “Road To Germany”

As a big fan of Bob Hope musical comedies, Family Guy’s “Road To…” episodes are by far my favorites of the show’s entire run. As I’ve mentioned, I think the best thing about the show is the rapport between Stewie and Brian, so putting them on a road trip to anywhere is an “A” in my book anytime. (Oh, and I also like road trip movies. That probably helps, too.) This time, they must travel back in time when Mort Goldberg, thinking Stewie’s time machine is a toilet, ends up in 1939 Poland on the day of the Nazi invasion.

Before jumping back in time, though, Stewie and Brian are given an update on Mort’s situation by Rick Moranis’s Seymour Krelborn, doing a hilarious riff on the “Da-Doo” sequence from one of my favorite films Little Shop Of Horrors. If that means nothing to you, here’s the original clip. (Oh, and in case you didn’t know, that’s Everybody Hates Chris actress Tichina Arnold as Crystal, one of the doowop singers over 20 years ago.)

In Poland, they track Mort to a synagogue. How?

Stewie: This trail of tissues should lead us to Mort.
Brian: Or Quagmire.
Stewie: Aaahahaahaaa…he’s gross.

Finally, they find Mort attending his ancestors’ wedding (thinking it’s heaven), but when the Germans attack it’s outtie for the trio. Escaping via sidecar, the chase does a good job of referencing both Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade and Back To The Future in ways more organic than the show is used to, and then continues along to London. Ah…but to return back to the present they need to find plutonium, so they have to go right into the belly of the beast and go to Berlin (but not before doing a quick bit mocking the Iraq War.)

The rest of the episode is another big long chase sequence, including another Indiana Jones reference (using the raft trick from Temple Of Doom, which I once saw the Mythbusters prove as entirely feasible), one for Blues Brothers, and one that I had to rack my brain to finally recognize (that army of golden-winged warriors? Flash Gordon.)

But while the episode was ambitious, exciting and very funny, I was disappointed that they intentionally left out a final song, something that accompanies all of the FG “Road To…” episodes. It’s not a “Road To…” episode without a reference to 1930s and 1940s musicals, goddamit! I demand a re-edit!

The fun fact from this episode: apparently Steve Buscemi’s teeth talk to each other.

American Dad 4.3 “One Little Word”

The less said about this episode the better, an embarrassing waste of Patrick Stewart’s presence on the show and a haphazard plot that rivaled the worst of The Simpsons and Family Guy.

In this episode, Bullock promotes Stan to be his #1 man, only to use that as an excuse to go places and pick up chicks. Where’s Bullock’s wife? Oh, she’s been in Iraq for three years after being captured by insurgents, and when Stan goes to rescue her, he finds that she has been brainwashed as a terrorist. Bringing her back home, Francine has to deal with her craziness as well as Bullock’s adopted child (leading Roger to start up some sibling rivalry when he gets jealous of the baby).

“She keeps using ketchup packets as foot grenades!” – Francine

Ah…but before that can be the plot of the episode, Bullock’s wife turns to normal, but not before Bullock can start an affair with a fat Asian woman. So there’s the next plot. Is that where the episode is going?

Nope. Now Stan has to babysit the fat Asian, ruining his Valentine’s Day plans with Francine.

“Francine, go upstairs and pack your sex helmet.” – Stan

So…yet another half-assed plot that goes nowhere, the episode ends not with chuckles but with groans, as Stan leaves Bullock shot in the knee by his wife, bleeding in a cabin while Stan and Francine can have some well-deserved “them time.”

Oy vey. It’s no secret that I think American Dad is a ridiculously underrated comedy, but this one was the pits.

Well, I did giggle at one of Roger’s closing lines (before he was nearly raped by a Furry.):

“Ah…I’m just gonna stare at the lake and think about how I almost killed a baby.” – Roger