Review: American Dad “Powering Through”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Stan mocks Steve for taking time off when he’s sick, but when Stan gets sick too, Steve mocks back, forcing Stan to try to keep up even while he grows ever sicker.

OUR TAKE

Third episode of the season and I am now noticing that we have only gotten the new version of the opening intro once as it’s supposed to be. Like we got it once for the premiere and so far we’ve avoided it since, but we’ve still got twelve more episodes so I’m sure we’ll see it again at some point. Anyway, we’ve got another episode of Stan trying to hold up his version of American Machismo even when it causes harm to his physical health, and once again this reminds me of a previous episode where a similar premise happened. Namely “A Jones for a Smith” from Season 5, which incidentally also involved Stan getting a cold and then taking things too far to prove a point, in that case getting an accidental crack addiction. Although in that episode, Stan did eventually learn a lesson about accepting help when he is feeling low, whereas here, he starts morphing into a strange feral mutant due to Dr. Weitzman creating a weird virus that turns into a full blown pandemic. So see, these are TOTALLY DIFFERENT episode plots, not related in any way, shape, or form. Okay, they’re also similar in that they’re both FOX episodes but that’s it!

In fact, here is the core difference. Where as the drug episode was ultimately about Stan feeling like he could make it through things without help or assistance from others, with the crack giving him a temporary boost in ability before slowly deteriorating him, the cold and subsequent mutant virus initially drains him down to looking like a husk, and the underlying cause of this anxiety for him this time is that he has worries that, if he isn’t around to do things for others, they may see him as useless and eventually put him out to pasture. So while the drug episode was focused on self-sufficiency, this cold episode is more about reliability to others, though the reveal of that being the issue for him feels like it was kind of tacked on at the end. But that is offset by having the whole mutant outbreak stuff adding some flavor to everything, which is itself also pretty funny. So yeah, another solid episode with an accidental connection to the past and some current era humor to blend it all together. We’ve got another episode next week and then a week off for some christian based programming on Fox but we’ll keep coming to ya with reviews as we’re able.