Award Whoring

American Dad, S08E09

Francine finally decided to cut off supporting Roger in all of his fake achievement, and Roger tried to win back her friendship by pretending to discover a lost mountain tribe.  Steve struggled to get Stan to answer some simple personal questions about himself so he could do his history report.

It's almost cute how much Francine will give Roger encouragement when she knows that all he does is pretend all day long.  So it's not a shock that he would have this huge collection of awards that he didn't deserve, including a fake degree.  I doubt that it's his first time pretending to graduate from a college.  Despite all of this it took quite a lot before Francine threw in the towel.  I would have already been like Stan and the others and not paying Roger any attention.

It was interesting to me that Roger seemed to cherish the self-made award that Francine awarded him more than the other awards that he had stolen.  There are times where Roger seems not to give a damn what people think about him at all, and then there are times he is so sensitive and wants to be beloved when he treats people any way that is convenient to himself.  At first, I was annoyed that he would again try to fool Francine with his little production with the tribe until Roger admitted how much he valued Francine's opinion.  It's more than her husband probably does, so I could see how Francine would be touched that Roger went to all of that trouble just to win back her favor.  Roger always seems to be going to great lengths to create his personas and fantasies that I think it does show how hard-working he can be.  It also shows how much of a psychopath he is, but if he's really determined to do something, he will take extraordinary and seemingly impossible steps to make it happen.  I agree that's worth a Frannie.

The main story wasn't really funny, but I sort of loved the side story about Steve and Stan.  First of all, Stan seemed so angry at Steve just for asking him a few questions.  I mean, he had this look of pure inconvenience before he even really knew what Steve was trying to do.  It just makes me laugh at the ease at which he can become perturbed.  The best part, however, was every time that Steve called Stan while he was at this Chinese restaurant (he must love that place), Stan kept saying these depressing and/or inappropriate things to him.  Stan was opening up finally, but not about anything that his son needed to hear from him.  It was especially bad when he was talking about his sex life with Francine.  I loved when Snot refused to let Steve end the call and steered the conversation to Francine's boobs:

[Snot] Dad, what do Mom's boobs look like?[Stan] I'll tell ya, Snot, they're perfect.

I like that Stan both wasn't fooled into thinking Snot was Steve and didn't care if Snot knew exactly how he felt about his wife's breasts.  He probably went on a very long discussion about that and other things with all those kids in the room.  So freaking funny.

In the end, I liked how Steve had lost all hope of getting his report done and showed his teacher exactly what happens when he tries to ask his father a simple question about his past.  I loved how disheartened the whole class looked after hearing Stan talk about how pointless life was and how he thought of ending it all.  And even when the teacher jumped out of the window, I thought it was funny.  Especially when he said:

Life dismissed.

There was also a good line at the beginning of the story after Stan told Steve to not even bother to do his history report:

[Klaus] It's high school, Steve.  It doesn't matter.[Steve] You said that about middle school.  When does it start to matter?[Klaus and Stan] Never.

Wise words from a bitter man and man stuck in a fish's body.

The last thing I sort of liked was Stan's admiration of Cuba Gooding, Jr.  He even sensed when he died and went to his funeral.  I bet if Steve had asked about CBJ's life, he might have been able to get a report.  That probably would have been better than sharing his father's dismal outlook on life with the class.

I liked this episode.  It's good to see that even though Roger will always be pretending, he doesn't really pretend to need Francine in his life.  Any episode where Roger isn't a complete ass is usually one I like a little better.  However, as far as the laughs went, I had to hand to Stan this week.  He was killing me with the TMI.  This story was a good indication of why the things Stan isn't saying freely are probably something better left unheard.

Steve's Wild Night

American Dad, S08E06

Stan and Francine's regular babysitter got injured and they decided to let Hayley watch Steve so that they could go to the horse show they were looking forward to.  Steve wanted to prove that he was wild, so he snuck out of the house to a party and Hayley spent the night trying to get him back before their parents figured out how irresponsible she was.  Stan and Francine hired Roger to drive them in a horse and carriage to the horse show, but his reckless driving on the highway made them miss the show when he wrecked the car.

There isn't much that I liked or disliked about this episode.  In general, I liked that Stan and Francine didn't trust Hayley to watch over Steve at all.  I sometimes forget that they don't find her to be really reliable.  It must be because she tends to be the one most concerned with what's morally right that it makes me overlook the fact that she is sort of a flake and a wildcard.  However, she would have had an easy time watching Steve if she hadn't pushed his buttons in the first place.

It was nice to see Steve have a pretty successful night.  He managed to run away from Hayley (which was easy because she wasn't prepared to chase after Steve in the first place), get alcohol to ensure his ticket to a party, get a cute girl's number, and spend a few seconds at a cool party.  For him, that was about as good as it gets, even with a methhead threatening him with a gun because he didn't give him a receipt and said addict getting his head shot off in the room of the girl he just met.

If I had to pick something I liked, it might be that Snot kept telling people "you're doing great," when they were being questioned by a police officer in Jeff's van.  Everyone was certainly not doing great, but Snot is so damn positive.  I'm still enjoying him from the previous episode and just thinking that he's such an upbeat guy that he has no clue that they were gonna get so arrested.

After seeing the grim end to the former babysitter, Lindsay, it was sort of nice that her ghost ended up helping Hayley and Steve move Francine's car back to the house in time.  I don't know why she chose to help them, but it was only slightly random, so I could go along with it.  Her good deed as a ghost sort of made her death seem a little less sad and unnecessary.

As far as Stan and Francine's story, I didn't care for the way they were so horny about horses.  It was almost too gross, but not quite there.  I'm just surprised that with Roger taking the carriage on the highway that no one got hurt.  I never expected them to get to their show with Roger handling their transportation, but they did get to see some kind of horse show.  However, I feel like their story didn't really add much of anything.  And Roger's role was minimum so it was lacking comedy for me.

This was an okay episode.  I certainly didn't have much to complain about.  It was nice to see things go pretty well for Steve and see Hayley and Steve sort of get along.  I don't know how I feel about Lindsay dying for the sake to help Steve and Hayley (it seemed), but at least it was something different to see.  However, I didn't see the point in Stan and Francine's story at all.  It could have been filled with more of Steve enjoying the night being "wild" for once.

Always Carry A Gun In The Hallway

American Dad, S08E05

Stan pretended to put Snot into witness protection so that he could keep Steve and Snot apart.  After spending time alone with Snot, Stan bonded with Snot and fought Steve for Snot's friendship.  Roger kept attacking Jeff in the hallway after Jeff cleaned his room for him.

I usually don't care for Snot, but in this episode he was just such a nice guy about the cruel things Stan was doing to him to keep Steve away that I sort of grew to like him.  I mean, Stan is such a hard person to reach on an emotional level and Snot was able to break through Stan's wall and befriend him.  You just have to love someone who could make Stan cut loose and stop being so callous.  All the things that Stan didn't like that Steve was doing with Snot became the same things that Stan enjoyed.  It's not surprising to see Stan contradict himself, nor try to compete with someone else.  It was just kinda funny to see him competing with Steve for Snot.  Although, if you think about it, it might have been crazier if they were fighting over Barry or something.  At least in this story Snot seemed worthy fighting for.

I can't say that the Roger story was better than the Stan story, but it definitely grabbed my attention more.  Um, Roger is such a psycho!  Usually, he has some kind of selfish reason for screwing someone over, but I don't think he had much reason to attack Jeff beyond wanting to just terrorize him.  At first it seemed like maybe he was doing it just to get back his money so he could get free cleaning services from Jeff, but it went beyond that.  I guess what was the funniest about this sick scenario was that Jeff had no idea that Roger was the same person attacking him, due to that weirdness where some of Roger's personas can't be detected by family members (although I don't know if Jeff even knows that Roger is an alien).  Roger kept attacking Jeff in ways that were impossible for him to pull off because he was basically in two places at the same time.  It made me feel worse for Jeff because he had no chance to escape Roger when Roger could defy the laws of physics.

Another funny point was how the hallway back to Jeff's room kept looking more and more like a creepy alleyway or just the outside of some ghetto apartments or something.  It was all dark and overly long, and at one point I could hear a baby crying.  I liked that ridiculous element of it because you started to forget that Jeff was just walking around in the house, probably not that far away from the attic in the first place.

Roger made the mugging more twisted when he decided to pull down Jeff's pants after assaulting him.  Luckily, Roger said that he didn't have time for it and walked away, but it was very unnerving!  Roger is the best at contradicting the statement that things couldn't get worse.  Even though it's sick that he was trying to violate Jeff, it was funny before Roger's last mugging attempt that he said to himself:

I’m gonna rape him this time.

I just don't get Roger.   With all of his talents (he seems to be able to fake a thousand different professions) and disguises, he could have his choice of real jobs and function outside of the Smith house as a normal person.  But instead, he spends a lot of time at home messing with people.  I mean, it was wonderful that Jeff had a gun to shoot Roger because he seriously was going to rape him.  And for probably no reason more than that he could get a kick out of knowing that Jeff wouldn't know it was him.   But despite all of Roger's flaws, he does spice up an episode with his horrible actions.  And you can't really know what he's going to do in the future because he's some kind of crazy, awful person (err...alien).

This was a good episode to make you appreciate Snot as a character more and possibly it was good to remind you that Stan is pretty pathetic in the friend department.  Roger, as usual, is so insane to the point you can't figure out why he's doing unspeakable things to friends and family.  However, if he didn't do all these shocking things, the show would be pretty dull.  I just really hope I don't have to see him top himself with something worse before the season ends.