Review: American Dad “What Great Advancements!”

Overview

An aspiring inventor leaves the Farm to make a go of it in The Big City.

Our Take

The show opens and I’m thinking “there’s no friggin’ way they are doing THIS for 22-minutes” and I was right but I was still very surprised with just how long writers Brett Cawley & Robert Maitia kept up with the throwback Fleisher Cartoons-look of the episode coupled with a silent film mystique that kept the episode voiceless for nearly two-and-a-half acts. Had the show went the entirety and just kept with the silent episode I think this could’ve been a perfect score because the BALLS these producers would have shown on the very last TBS episode to go voiceless would have been legendary.

Instead we get an almost Pleasantville meets steam punk effort that was actually supposed to be the penultimate season finale with “Guardian” debuting this week. Moreover the episode was clearly written/produced during the time of the Hollywood strikes because you can see a number of sight gags during the crowd protests which helped make this episode extra unique and weird which is exactly the way I like my American Dad on TBS.

I’ll go into more depth into a season review next week, but this episode marks a bittersweet moment for American Dad. For my money, if TBS doesn’t pick up this series so many years ago the show would not have grown and eventually found its voice as it has. With the way this week’s episode has ended, it’s clear the producers had a subtle nod built-in as American Dad returns to FOX.

I don’t know if this is my favorite episode of American Dad this season (I’ll let you know next week) but this probably should be the one that goes in for the Emmy because it’s such an odd duckling that it might have an outside chance of winning. I’d maybe settle for a bunch of Annies for Jennifer Graves for best director because she always seems to get the American Dad episodes that needs a little something different and she ALWAYS comes through and that’s very much evident here.

See ya next week for the season review. I still don’t know what I’m going to number the season, but I’ll save that problem for next week.