Review: American Dad “Casino Normale”

The episode dragged on slowly, almost painfully from there. We have seen this classic trope many times before on American Dad. After a CIA event, Francine wants to keep the excitement going while Stan just wants a normal life at home. I feel like we’ve seen this storyline many times. Francine ends up setting up a chat room with the help of Klaus and pretends to be a spy to get Stan’s attention. One amusing moment was the CIA using archaic chat technology– the simple emojis and so forth.

The side story is Roger starts to get into classic cars to win the “thumbs up” from mustache men. Roger reveals that his main motivation was to catch Jay Leno because his name is in Roger’s book of revenge. The funniest part in the entire episode is when Roger catches him with a dog catcher tool. Much to the chagrin of Steve and Hayley, Roger keeps Jay hostage in the basement like an animal.

Stan and Francine meet a spy named “The Falcon”, they defeat him with normal/gross means and ultimately come to the realization that the normal life that they had at home was special. This week’s episode wasn’t an original or funny episode, and was probably one of the weakest American Dad! episodes in the entire run of the show. There just wasn’t anything interesting or special about it- it felt thrown together.

I think sometimes American Dad! writers try to go for this touching Simpsons-esque story style. In my opinion, however, for an American Dad! episode to shine, it has to be weird and hilarious. To be fair, that describes the better Simpsons episodes too. More weird and funny, and less sentimental. That’s what’s good about most of these shows though, rotating writers means something totally different next week. The AD! season just came back, so there are many more chances for more greatness.