Toys And Steve's Virginity Are Here To Stay

American Dad, S07E18

Stan took Steve to lose his virginity in Mexico because he wanted Steve to grow out of playing with toys.  They failed to find a suitable whorehouse to facilitate that and also got kidnapped by some drug cartel.  They only managed to escape when Steve used his imagination through a toy made from parts he found in their cell.  In a side story, Roger wanted to steal a bottle of Rain Duck from Greg and Terry to enjoy with the steak dinner Francine made.  All of his attempts failed, so Francine had to get it herself, but Roger had planned all alone to get rid of Francine and have the meal to himself.

It's episodes like these that make me think that Steve and Junior from The Cleveland Show are so similar.  They both are teenage boys who refuse to grow up and continue to play with toys.  I would have preferred that Stan fight Steve and his "army" toys over and over again, rather than have had Stan listen to Klaus' plan.  Taking a teenager out of the country to get laid seems a little extreme just because you don't like him playing with dolls.  Steve seemed to love the idea, but I think if he and Stan had succeeded it would have somehow warped him.  It would have at least taught Steve that it was okay to buy sex, and possibly he would have never bothered to seek companionship based on mutual affection.  So in a sense, the fact that every whorehouse they went to was disgusting and horrifying was a great thing.

I just wish that they didn't have to portray Mexico in such a horrible light.  I don't know which of the places they went to (that were shown) was worse, but I especially disliked when everyone was vomiting on the streets.  I also don't understand why anyone besides Stan and Steve needed to puke at that particular moment.  It seemed unnecessarily gross.  Even if it was for a joke about horchata (I've never tried it, so that one goes over my head), I think it was excessive.

I had hope for them to enjoy nicer trip when Stan and Steve were taken in by a group of people in a car, until they all took out guns on them.  But truth be told, it's always risky to take a ride from a stranger no matter what country you're in.  It was just a little ironic because just before Stan and Steve knew they were in danger, the man said that most of Mexico is wonderful.  At least that line suggests that the writers aren't completely trying to make Mexico seem unpleasant.  I just wish things had turned out differently, but I guess their troubles were vital to Stan allowing Steve to continue playing with toys.

I was glad, too, that Steve had such a great imagination because I don't know what kind of food they were fed in their cell, but it didn't look like anything good.  In Steve's mind they could be eating food that was recognizable and weren't surrounded by rats and roaches.  I also didn't like looking at the toilet paper tube, roach-headed, rat skeleton-armed toy that Steve made. So glad that he could picture it as something less creepy and nasty.  If I had to watch Steve the whole time shaking that monstrosity of a toy around throughout the end of the story, I'd have had to look away most of the time.  Especially with its roach head (I can't stand those things).

Because of my repulsion of "Pedro," I couldn't blame Steve for throwing the thing out when they got away from their captors.  I liked that the fantasy version of Pedro was outraged, though.  Plus, he said that line that you hear at the end of the episodes: "Bye, have a beautiful time."  That was kind of cute.  It made me like the ending of the episode a lot more.

As far as the Roger story went, I can't believe that I didn't suspect that it was all going to be a setup by Roger.  From the beginning, I wondered why Roger would bring a really nice wine (that he obviously loved) to a steak dinner that Francine claimed was going to be for her and Stan (did she have no idea that he went down to Mexico?).  I guess I got distracted at his attempts to steal the last bottle from Greg and Terry that I started to ignore the why.  He wasted all this time making a device with dominoes and other triggers throughout the house just to take out their electricity.  What a rip (not in a way that made me laugh).  After Roger was failing like a champion, I was glad to see Francine get the damn bottle in a quick minute.  But I was pissed that Roger set her flying away on a giant wrecking ball.  Not another story where he just screws over someone and gets to reap the profits at the end!  Freaking Roger.  I love him because he provides fantasy and creepy humor, but I hate how he is frequently exempt from consequences.  He needs to pay more often!

This may be an episode I would come to like after watching again.  It lacked a lot of the usual annoyance I find when the stories concentrate on one of Stan's plans (or Klaus', really).  It would have been better if Roger was a little funnier, but at least he wasn't portraying himself as another obnoxious persona and was more or less playing himself this time.  However, it would have been even better to see Roger get away with less in the future.  The joke of Roger screwing people over for his own selfish needs is really starting to wear thin.

Good Ol' Predictable Cougar Town

Cougar Town, S03E01

 After much waiting (not for me because I watch enough shows that I don't really notice), Cougar Town returns to ABC.  I think it's relatively funny show, but not as funny as the creator's former show, Scrubs.  That show was great, and had such wonderful chemistry between the cast.  I get the same kind of vibe from Cougar Town, but it doesn't quite strike my funny bone as hard as its elder.  Anyway, I was mildly interested to see it back.

They start off the episode with the aspect that I love the most on the show: the gang's intense need to drink wine all the time.  Jules comes up with idea to make a wine glass neck strap so they don't have to hold wine glasses anymore.  But they decided that they enjoying holding the glasses, so instead of abandoning the straps, they just have two glasses: one for decoration and one for drinking.  Good God, these people are drunks!  But you have to respect how they keep taking "pounding grape" to a new crazy level.  I would only like to join them if it was time to sit around and drink wine like it was going out of style.

The main issue in the episode was that Jules was thought to be predictable by her friends.  I knew that once this was made clear, she would try to show her spontaneous side, but fool no one.  She tells Grayson that she wants them to be a couple that always surprises each other, but with a man who can compose a song about your daily routine to the point that he is singing about you throwing away a mouth piece, there will be few on Jules' end.  Unsurprisingly, she tells off some skater kids who are making noise while she and Grayson chat.  Later, her car is toilet paper "sharked," and she schemes to get back at them.

I thought that Jules would be wrong about the kids that attacked her (since it was a rather large group), and she would end up making an new enemy.  However, after she goes to the house of the "culprit," the police shows up, and she and the reduced gang have to scatter.  Just as Jules is about to get caught, it is revealed that the policeman is in fact Grayson.  How did Grayson get a cop car?  Laurie and Tom were in on it.  Grayson was the one who had sharked her car!  I was confused about why he had done so at first.  Was he just trying to give her a surprise?  Jules is pretty dumb, though.  She didn't notice that the fake address Grayson had given her was an empty house of her own listing.  Wow.  She must be one hell of a realtor.  I finally understood what Grayson's plan was when he proposed!  Whoa!  On a season prieimere?? I didn't see that coming at all!  I mean, I knew that one day he might, but to propose underneath a tp-ed tree?  I've never seen that before.  Besides that this was one of the most original proposals that I've seen on TV, Jules was unusually lip-locked at that time.  She found some words, but it was sweet that they had a moment without her talking so much that she kind of ruined it.

That was the sweet part of the episode, but let me talk about the funny parts.  The best of all was the now toddler Stan, aka the Devil Baby.  Ellie, the toughest character on there, tells him that he should apologize and Stan just casually says, "Doubt it."  I did not have high expectations for this kid, but he instantly got my adoration.  Ellie and Andy are pretty terrified of him and with good reason when he is known to be walking around with a hammer, destroying things in neighbors' yards.  We later see him with hammer in hand, up to no good.  Love it.  Stan also shows that he isn't playing around when Laurie dares to take off his mutant, killer rabbit picture off the fridge.  Upon seeing this he stops in his tracks and turns to stare at his parents with his demonic eyes without a word.  Wow!  Can we just have a whole episode about him??  So creepily cute!

I also enjoyed how the gang kept saying "This should be the gang," when one or more of the other members weren't present.  My favorite version of the gang was Ellie and her wine glass.  She reminds me of myself.  Haha.

The last funny part I want to mention is the green screen at Travis' college house.  I thought it was an insignificant little side story, but it turned out to be a more humorous device than it first appeared.  I loved when Andy and Bobby were using the green screen to pretend they were flying through the clouds.  The only thing was that they couldn't even see what they were doing.  Still, their child-like friendship has always been a point of hilarity for me.  I'm not surprised that Jules later uses it to fashion an overly dramatic re-proposal scene for she and Grayson.  It's nice that he's so whipped that he doesn't even question having to do that for her.

Grayson tells Jules that she's not boring because she's crazy.  I think what he meant to say is that she was predictably crazy.  You may not know what brand of crazy she will be, but you do know that if something goes wrong, she's not going to respond in the same way a normal person would.  I'm glad that we can still count on that with this new season of Cougar Town.  It may prove to be an interesting season after all.