Season Review: American Dad Season 14

Good Night, USA.

We’re closing out the show’s 14th’s season (or 12th if you wanna believe my cable guide), so naturally, things are going to start feeling like the writers are just throwing darts at a board to come up with episode ideas. I probably could have gone the rest of my life not noticing this if I hadn’t been assigned to cover this show halfway through this season, but since it’s now currently my job to scrutinize it top to bottom, I couldn’t help but see that certain story types repeated themselves at least a couple times within this set. Proving once and for all in my quest to chronicle my subjective initial feedback in the vain hopes that once human society has crumbled to dust and is lost to the winds of history that visiting alien species will find these reviews and determine that no, we were not, in fact, worth saving.

Some examples of these increasingly glaring similar episode types include:

Episodes where Stan manipulates and/or wrongs someone or someones in the family because of his own insecurities and learns a lesson he will inevitably forget (“Father’s Daze“, “Portrait of Francine’s Genitals“, “Fight and Flight“, “Bahama Mama“, “The Life and Times of Stan Smith”)

Episodes where Roger is invited to help or take part in a seemingly benign thing which goes completely out of hand (“The Enlightenment of Ragi-Baba“, “Roger’s Baby“, “Kloger”, “The Talented Mr. Dingleberry“)

Episodes where Francine’s perception of Stan and their marriage is proven wrong, so she overcorrects and makes things worse: (“Whole Slotta Love“, “Casino Normale“)

Episodes where Stan has an inability to show intimacy or sympathy at important moments, which push his non-human friends to do ridiculous things, which need a half-apology from Stan to resolve (“A Nice Night for a Drive“, “Julia Rogerts“)

And episodes where Steve’s naïve, childish innocence and good intentions make things worse for his friends and family (“Ninety North Zero West“, “The Witches of Langley,” “Bazooka Steve“, “Camp Campawanda“, “Garbage Stan“)

Of course, this means the remaining four episodes could be considered stand-outs and exceptions, at least for this year. “The Long Bomb” puts an unique type of focus on Stan and Hayley’s father-daughter relationship where the two genuinely want to build a bridge after years of fighting but don’t know how. West to Mexico is a good self-contained alternate universe western. And “The Bitchin Race” and “Family Plan” are…different in their own ways. Not necessarily good ways, but definitely different.

We have at least one season ahead of us, and I can’t see them stopping before the show reaches its 300th episode, so I guess looking forward I wouldn’t mind it if the show got back to its political roots. Not that a certain giant yelling “‘Cheeto” needs any more attention, but it would certainly be interesting to see a hardline Republican like Stan face the state of his party and finding more of a bond with his liberal daughter in the process. And speaking of Hayley, it was nice feeling rewarded for following the show as long as I have by having two episodes focused on her and Jeff crawling through adulthood and trying to have a baby was nice, especially while also being sort of a follow up to the business of Jeff being in space. So more character progression please. And…I dunno, more AU episodes wouldn’t hurt.

So we shut the book on American Dad’s third season at TBS, on the eve of the network bringing on several new animated shows. How long will this show last on its second channel? Only time will tell. But at least I don’t have to break my back trying to scrounge together meaningful reviews of a Seth MacFarlane animated show anymore.

…I’m covering Family Guy next month? Fuck.

SCORE
6.5/10