Review: American Dad “Stan Moves to Chicago”

Overview:

Stan, tired of seeing faces from his past achieve their dreams, becomes inspired to shed his humble CIA lifestyle and begin anew in Chicago with the hopes of making it big as a comedian. Stan faces many hurdles with his comedy “career” that take him down some unexpected directions that only bolster his confidence and further frustrate his neglected family. Stan’s past aligns with his new present and a big comedy opportunity actually has a lot more to do with his natural CIA instincts. 

Stan continues to find his voice in Chicago while Roger attempts to teach a lesson of his own to Steve and Hayley, only it’s not one that will leave the lazy duo laughing.

Our Take:

Many episodes of American Dad kick off with Stan’s firm beliefs coming under fire. It’s one of the most popular story angles for the series and it boils down to the well-defined caricature that Stan has become over 300+ episodes. Stan’s personality is always unabashedly on display and two of the most prominent details about the character is that he’s a natural at his CIA job and that he’s also not a humorous individual in the slightest. “Stan Moves to Chicago” tells a story that reckons with both of these tenets of Stan in a creative way that sees him attempt to change his destiny and achieve his dreams, only for the universe to course-correct his behavior and prove to him that he’s already found his purpose.

The details of Stan’s past and his formative years have largely been filled in during American Dad’s many seasons. However, “Stan Moves to Chicago” carefully rewrites an important chapter from Stan’s history that reveals that apparently his passion in life has always been comedy and that falling in with the CIA has merely been a happy accident that’s become literally the perfect fit for Stan’s life. With zero hesitation, Stan heads off to Chicago to introduce the world to such classic characters as Turtle Man (it’s no Pudding Man) while he sticks it to Chicago Dave and his mannequin wife.

A lot of the best jokes in “Stan Moves to Chicago” stem from just how toxic Stan is to comedy and that he fundamentally doesn’t understand the basics behind humor. Stan’s headstrong pursuit to take Chicago’s comedy scene by storm could develop in a number of different ways, but Stan’s immediate failure is the best possible angle for this story rather than Stan’s obliviousness somehow registering as some kind of anti-comedy that finds him success. It makes a lot more sense that Stan’s ascent through the world of comedy is actually orchestrated by the CIA so that he can inadvertently carry out one of their missions. Stan cannot escape the CIA, even when he thinks he’s taken up an entirely different path in life and fled away from Langley.

“Stan Moves to Chicago” leans in especially hard to all of the “S and L–Sketches and Laughter” gags that at first seem pretty juvenile, but then become so overbearing and stupid that they circle back around to being funny again. It’s slightly bizarre to see American Dad spend so much time in this slightly off-center version of the world, but it’s an experiment that works better than when this same territory was tackled ages ago on Family Guy. There’s actually a kernel of logic regarding how the events behind Stan hosting “S and L” come together. All of this gets pushed to an increasingly exaggerated place and there’s also a nice meta quality to have James Adomian doing voices in an episode that so heavily throws shade at Saturday Night Live, while also technically doesn’t throw any shade at Saturday Night Live. 

Most of the Smith family spend time in Chicago and New York City while they thwart international terrorism, but Hayley, Steve, and Roger have the house to themselves and struggle to settle on the right atmosphere. Roger hungers for pandemonium, yet Steve and Hayley are burnt out from the constant shenanigans that Roger dispenses. Instead of trying to find a way to rebel with Roger, Hayley and Steve instead attempt to teach him the art of a sedentary lifestyle that subsists on slacking. 

“Stan Moves to Chicago” is a big episode of American Dad that covers a lot of ground. There are moments where the story almost gets away from itself, but it always comes back to Stan’s characterization and the humanity behind his especially deluded crusade. The sheer amount of time that this episode spends immersed in pop culture and Saturday Night Live gags may dissuade some viewers, but it properly transforms the broad plot into a CIA mission that feels like vintage American Dad. It’s still appealing to see the series eschew old story ideas like this when there was a lengthy stretch over the past few seasons where Stan actively seemed averse to any CIA work. “Stan Moves to Chicago” is an episode where Stan finally does get a laugh, but more importantly, he also receives some much-needed clarity. 

And for those that are trying to build a movie club viewing schedule out of the films watched on this season of American Dad, there’s now The Beguiled to add alongside The Land Before Time.