Review: American Dad “Idol Threat”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Mertz’ bullying instincts overtake him as Steve is trying to reinvent his public image, accidentally leading to him saving Steve’s life from a rickety carnival ride. Now Steve must try to uncover how this is all probably a ploy by his bully soaks in all the praise and adulation, and may even be trying to turn over a new leaf.
OUR TAKE
American Dad returns…again! After almost an entire month off, we’re back for single episode before another two weeks off! Ah, so glad to be back to these weird ass Fox release schedules. Also, I think this might be the first episode of the series entirely about Mertz! I might need to do a bit more research on this (I won’t) but if I remember correctly, Mertz is basically just a stand in for any bully character, and is more often than not just there to be a device for other characters’ plots to happen, like Snot feeling forced to get violent to stand up to him, or even having his future self go back in time to manipulate Steve and Snot to screw up their potentially successful future lives as revenge. And yet, Mertz himself is never very directly involved with any of that, if he’s ever more than a background character making a small quip here or there. So yeah, this feels like a first for him, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak more in one episode than here. But does that make this a stand out episode of the show? Well, not really, aside from this one bit of incidental trivia about it. Oh, and it’s the first Steve focused episode of this season and era so, there’s that I guess?
I mean, this is hardly the first time that Steve has tried to rework his image among peers and make himself seem cooler, only for it to go awry. Heck, it’s not even the first time he’s tried to do that with a braided belt! But I think I’m finally hitting that bit of a snag I tend to do when covering long running episodic animated comedies where the only thing I can really add is “huh, this is kind of like some of the hundreds of episodes this show has already done, but it’s also like this OTHER handful of episodes from the hundreds of episodes this show has already done!” As for commentary specific to this one episode, I did like the big reveal at the end where Mertz revealed that he really was faking it this entire time, though I have to admit, I was kind of hoping that he was being genuine and that Steve just sort of pushed him back into it. Oh yeah, and I liked that one bit with the truck driver managing to not cause an accident because of typical oafishness…until he eventually did. And the future bit at the end was also fun. See ya bozos in two weeks!
