Review: American Dad “Guardian”

Overview

Stan uses a mothballed military computer to do Steve’s math homework, starting the clock toward nuclear annihilation.

Our Take

The penultimate episode of the 21st season of American Dad has arrived and if you were to tell me that this episode was written by Brian Boyle a week ago as opposed to more like 18 months ago I 100% would have believed you. The plot of the episode features everything you need ripped from the headlines within the last 60 days or so up to and including AI, problems with Mexico, rockets heading to a space station, and Tiktok being the cause and solution to a lot of issues with American culture.

Meanwhile, this is all happening as the rest of the Smith family is arguing over deja vu whilst Stan and Steve have a father-son bonding moment of doing everything they can to unfuck the fact that they accidentally launched a Skynet-esque program that’s heading for the nukes via our mobile networks. Really heady stuff Mr. Boyle and I bet you wanted to pull that fucking trigger didn’t ya? I WISH YOU DID! I will say there’s some derivation here from the main plot of Kingsman: Secret Service in the manner of which Brian is opting to take us all out though replacing the big bad to that of AI which has been a theme for a lot of show biz writers these last few months. I wonder why?

Big kudos goes out to Tim Parsons for directing an episode that featured what looked to be a live Tiktok video, 8-bit backgrounds, and sort of having me on the edge of my seat wondering what the hell was going to happen with this nuclear strike. Whenever the show calls for crazy shit, the producers seem to call in Tim who really delivers every time he’s up to the plate.

With how crazy this week’s episode of American Dad was that must mean that the show’s finale may or may not be a doozy which is the way these guys like to do things. Whether or not this comes to pass will be anyone’s guess, until next week.