Review: American Dad “The Life and Times of Stan Smith”

Play the music, nerd!

American Dad returns after a month and a half break for the final stretch of its longest season yet! Longest only in that it, once it’s all said and done, will have taken TEN MONTHS to finish, with five of those months being on break. If TBS hadn’t already pre-renewed another season, I’d be certain they were trying to weed it out to cancellation.

The main plot this time starts on Stan, straight as an edge hetero-normative machismo generator, showing off his latest physical results in testosterone soaked glory, even though said results aren’t exactly in his favor. Of note is higher cholesterol, which concerns Francine but doesn’t faze Stan. Roger, pulling from his grab bag of convenient alien powers that suit the current situation, tells her that Stan probably won’t change unless he gets a near death experience, which Roger can supply because he is 60% electricity and can act as a defibrillator. Though I guess it’s about as valid as Bender from Futurama always being 40% anything.

Once he comes out of the heart attack, Stan vows to everyone to change his diet and get healthier, but later reveals that he knows it was Roger’s doing. Though instead of being mad, he wants to do it again. Turns out that whole “life flashing before your eyes” thing is more of a “life viewable as a video rental store” type deal, and it gave Stan the chance to relive the best moments of his life that he has been trying to relive throughout his entire adult life. This starts an addiction to dying just to avoid the dieting and reminders of his mortality, but eventually, Roger stops doing it, leading Stan to try his own way. Francine finds out about it at the exact wrong time, ending up with them both dead for real until Stan makes a literal deal with the devil to get bring them both back as long as he goes to hell next time.

Meanwhile, Steve is anxious about getting ready for college, so Klaus gets him into a pledge program at Arizona State which goes awry. So…there’s that.

Yeah, this one was pretty packed near the end. Heaven and hell aren’t uncommon concepts to American Dad, but suddenly dropping us there for the last few minutes to just to hastily wrap things up was probably not the way to go. Especially not without a cameo Michelle, Stan’s incompetent angel lawyer friend! Why did you even put Paget Brewster in the episode if you weren’t for that?!

Anyway, putting on my “acts like I could write this better despite being in my mid-20’s and still living with my parents” hat for a second, it seems to me that because this story focused on Stan wanting to keep going back to that Blockbuster-esque purgatory, that what should have been a thematic resolution is his constant messing with trying to get there puts him in a coma and on the verge of death. After that, he starts combing through all of his memories one after the other until he realizes he’s become bored with only living in the past, and that he wants to create new memories with the people around him, allowing him to escape that world and wake up from the coma. Something like that.

But it’s been pretty clear for a while that this show, like its peers, has mainly just been coasting since it hit the double digit season mark, so I don’t know why I’m complaining. Just would be nice to be surprised once in awhile. Well, seven more to go, so see you next week for “The Bitchin’ Race”.

SCORE
6/10