Wrestling For Some Good Material

American Dad, S7E12

I have a hard time deciding anything to discuss about Sunday's American Dad because it just didn't do anything for me comedy-wise.  Which is strange because usually when Roger and Stan are battling each other, it usually turns out to be a little crazy.  Instead, there was just a desperate Stan trying to hold onto a teenage sports record, while Roger more or less did things by the book to shatter that record and get his own little museum in their house.  This was ridiculous in not the good way. 

 The only thing I sort of smiled about was when Roger was leading Francine and Stan out of the Stan museum and showed them a CD:

Make sure to check out our Stan Smith pan flute rain forest music. Each song sounds the same, yet somehow manages to be worst than the last.

That joke was on point.  I'm surprised that there weren't more good jokes from Roger, considering he was doing a sport that required him to lay on top of people.  He had a few sexual references here and there, but nothing too creepy that you had to laugh at to hide your discomfort.  And that is what makes Roger a great character usually, but I felt like in this episode he was pretty tame by his standards.  I thought Roger locking Barry into a freezer to only have him roll out into the gym on fire was almost funny.  But it wasn't enough to get me to laugh.

 They stretched out a gag about the principal betting on ridiculous things (like when a girl would get her period--eww!) to the very last seconds of the episode where he was betting on preschool children coloring within the lines.  They wouldn't have needed to do this if the episode had been funny enough itself, but they wanted to add in that extra joke before they were done.  It just made me think that the 30 minutes would have been better spent on an episode about the principal's gambling problem rather than the Stan and Roger wrestling match.

I'm really wondering if the Seth MacFarlane shows have lost their charm with me or if they are just going through a rough patch of episodes.  I'd like to think that I still enjoy random violence, obscure references, and obscenity just for humor sake, but I really haven't liked anything in SF world lately.  I did like that Stan as an old man one, so I guess I shouldn't be too quick to judge, but I think that I should consider pulling one or two of these shows from my primary TV routine.