Review: American Dad “I Am the Jeans: The Gina Lavetti Story”

I could take or Levi’s this episode.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After being denied home shopping swag for the last time, Francine reconnects with an old, needy friend, Gina Lavetti (who turns out to be Roger because of course she’s Roger). In hopes of being more supportive in their friendship than she had previously been (which Gina is quick to remind her of), Francine pushes Gina to pursue her latest inspiration: jeans made to fit middle aged women like her (but, ya know, actual human women). However, Francine’s desire to be supportive unravels into her pushing Gina into a home shopping TV spot over channel favorite Tuttle, even through sabotage, but that eventually gets Gina to fire Francine. However, it soon becomes clear that these special jeans were made of pieces of Roger’s spaceship, causing a mass migration of women that Francine must help undo by finally supporting her friend.

Also, Stan and Steve suddenly start becoming envious of each others’ eyebrows, causing a Freaky Friday switch that forces them to spend the day as each other because everyone only recognizes them by their distinctive eyebrows. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.

OUR TAKE

It’s time for another edition of “American Dad Episode that was definitely a tribute to a previous one and not a sign of the show being completely out of ideas!” This week’s episode takes influence from a few old and a few new, starting with Season 2’s “Star Trek”, wherein Stan pushes Steve to become a hotshot children’s book writer who eventually turns on him, similar to how Francine pushes Roger-Gina in her jean making business. Francine’s overzealous helping turned controlling nature is also shown in Season 13’s “Anchorfran”, wherein she goes through a similar plot helping Greg as a co-anchor. And Roger’s not innocent of this either, as seen in Season 14’s “The Talented Mr. Dingleberry”, where he basically ends up doing the same thing for Steve as a Goosebumps-style puppet. What I’m saying is that this kind of story is very tried and tested in this series.

Though what really got me in this episode was, once again, the B-plot. Freaky Friday body swapping comedies are nothing new to animated comedies, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that did something with such a superficial feature as eyebrows. I’m honestly unsure whether or not Stan and Steve actually switched eyebrows, which may actually be the point. Perhaps this is a commentary about the ever changing but eternally shallow aspirations to become as attractive as we perceive others to be, and that we should just be comfortable in our own skin. Or I’m over thinking this very simple joke in order to help pad out by minimum word count. But despite that very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very likely possibility, I did find this bit surprisingly funny, just like I hope my boss thinks this bit of ingenious laziness is also funny enough to not dock my pay. Please?

But that’s two episodes of this season down, twenty to go, and they’ve both been pretty mediocre in my eyes. Not offensively bad by any means, but also nothing close to stellar, which you could argue may be worse than being right out terrible. At least a terrible episode can get a strong reaction out of you, but a mediocre one just feels like it comes and goes with no emotional impact. The season is still young, however, so here’s hoping the next twenty scratch the itch these first two have not.