Review: American Dad “Family Plan”

Apparently it’s “blonde mothers defend crazy older relatives” week.

Spoilers Below

The Smiths attend the wedding of Dr Calgary, a fairly recent addition to the cast who mainly shows up whenever they need some big freaky surgery to happen like Steve wanting to be taller or Roger needing to birth Jeff (long story), usually accompanied by his deformed assistant Billy. He is also apparently a best friend of Klaus, which made it suddenly occur to me that he should have been the guy at the CIA that put Klaus’s brain in a fish body. Seems like a pretty natural way to connect them via the show’s established backstory, but nope, they’re just buds because…weird stuff. But yeah, he’s getting married to some frankensteiny lady.

Though what really gets Francine’s attention is the packed house, filled with friends and family, and how she wishes she had a large family or at least one larger than the one she has. Naturally, Hayley sees a connection between this and Francine being adopted and suggests looking into the Adoption Center. And this leads to Francine adopting ten babies. Because of course, it does. After that’s resolved, she gets the number to her father’s house.

Francine’s birth parents had actually shown up once before way back in Season 3, apparently having abandoned her to avoid riding in coach on a vacation flight and then becoming rich due to not spending so much on a kid. She then got adopted by Mama and Ba Ba, who raised her in Chinese culture and customs and became recurring supporting characters throughout the show…and then disappeared after it moved to TBS. They’re not even brought up in this episode where they would probably be very relevant. Odd.

Well, turns out the birth mother died between then and now and the father’s having a big family gathering and finally getting to meet her (since they technically never met in that one episode awhile back). Francine finally gets to have a big family she always wanted, including awful distant relatives like Janet. Though soon the family uses up all of the dad’s data on his FAMILY phone PLAN (get it? Because that’s the title of the episode) and turns the reunion into a Battle Royale murder fest. Instantly, the casualties begin piling up, though Francine finds an unlikely ally in Janet! And her multi level marketing make up kit. Yadda yadda yadda, Francine survives with the help of her old family and learns to appreciate them because they were there from the beginning, maybe Janet will be a recurring character, the end.

I guess the only thing really worth mentioning is the outright forgetting of the show’s continuity. I know it’s not really that big a deal with something this episodic, but it just seems weird to suddenly drop members of Francine’s family to make her do such an 180 on her idea of family in general. Again, not really a huge deal, just kinda eyebrow raising. Other than that, pretty standard and unremarkable for this show. Also, maybe don’t get into multi level marketing if you can help it. It really doesn’t pay in the long term.