Review: American Dad “I’ve Got A Friend In Me”

Overview

After a freak accident, Stan and Roger end up stuck together in the worst possible way; Klaus contends with an impostor.

Our Take

From the title I thought this week’s episode of American Dad was going to be some sort of a premise built on innuendo, but in actuality the premise of the episode has to do with fusing Roger and Stan’s bodies together for no real reason other than to see what would happen and I like the results. American Dad does this thing that’s similar to The X-Files in that The X-Files will often do “monster-of-the-week” episodes sprinkled along the overarching theme of aliens invading Earth and both Mulder and Scully having to deal with it. Likewise, this week’s episode revisits what I would say is the main overarching theme of what American Dad has always been about and that’s what the hell is Roger doing here and is he ever going to leave. And while this week’s episode doesn’t do a lot of soul-searching on that last part, the former gets a good amount of focus and reinforces the pathos of the show. Some might note that this week’s episode of American Dad shares a bit in common with a popular episode of The Simpsons called “Dead And Shoulders” which was a part of one of the Treehouse of Horrors but whereas The Simpsons has to reserve sci-fi premises for just once a year, a show like American Dad that features aliens among us probably deserves the right to lean more into that sort of a story line.

Likewise, we get some time-spent with Klaus and the rest of the family whom seem to prefer a paper-mache effigy put together by Steve which I thought showed a lot of growth within the family even if for only brief fleeting moments.

I couldn’t get enough of the constant train attacks like, holy shit, there were a bunch of trains just coming out of nowhere. We also had one-and-a-half takes of the classic American Dad intro which is a tool that Family Guy sometimes uses for cutaway gags. Add in the Arby’s jokes, Roger’s incessant innuendo, and more and writer Jeff Kauffmann put together a solid episode. I wanted to also give some flowers to Jansen Yee who directed a solid episode with more kudos being given to the scenes having us go in and out of Stan’s body to show Roger messing with Stan’s internal organs which seemed like a difficult scene to try and bring home but I think was nailed perfectly and was arguably one of, if not THE, highlight of the whole show.

Three episodes in and American Dad is still throwing some good pitches to kick off the show’s season.