Review: American Dad “The Flume Flume Room”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Francine wants to ride Log Flume rides with Stan, but Stan does not. Also, Roger gets mail about an old abandoned persona.

OUR TAKE

We’re on our first Stan and Francine marital problems episode of this new Fox era, as well as the first one of those in…holy shit, two and a half years? Yeah, I guess the last one was “Frantastic Voyage” about Francine finding out Stan was keeping work friends that liked her away from her. And now in this episode, he’s prioritizing work to not spend time with her. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he didn’t like his wife! And suddenly I am aware of why they may have not done an episode like this in so long. But this was surprisingly a very wholesome, very funny, and pretty creepy episode at times, which are often the mixture of things in an American Dad episode that I quite enjoy. Francine getting into niche and kitschy interests often leads to pretty funny stuff, and getting super into log flume rides and their culture (which I’m not sure exists in real life but I know that roller coaster subculture is a real thing) is doing just that, especially in how it makes use of online stuff. American Dad tries to stay evergreen with its cultural references, but the Internet is becoming so encompassing that even an old timey forum feels pretty recent and easy to understand.

The search for a lost Log Flume ride, the Row-and-Oak (which they point out has a neat little reference to an actually disappeared colony) gets more into the creepy side that I like about this show, as its eccentric and wealthy owner apparently had a bit of a mental breakdown about environmentalism and made a ride about how the planet is dying and even has a recording of him saying that people who ride this must die. And to tie into Roger’s B plot, his old songwriter persona apparently wrote the song at the end of the ride. But also it turns out the owner isn’t dead and just got distracted by drugs, so all’s good…except for all the people who clearly died riding this thing. But yeah, another good episode and a sign that things are going to be business as usual for this new tenure the show has on its original network. Looks like next week’s episode is another Stan one, where he gets very much down with the sickness, so wear a mask and use hand sanitizer before watching that one I guess.