Review: American Dad “The Treasure of Old Chinatown”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Bah Bah takes Steve on a treasure hunt, much to Francine’s chagrin. Also, Roger tries being a local food critic.
OUR TAKE
What better way to commemorate an attempt on a sitting president’s life than a return to American Dad, back after a two week break! As hinted at by showrunner Matt Weitzman, this episode brings the return of Francine’s Chinese foster parents, Mah Mah and Bah Bah. They’ve made small voiceless cameos over the years, but the last time they had a focus episode, or even any speaking role at all, was OVER A DECADE ago in the previous Fox era, Season 9’s Thanksgiving episode “Kung Pao Turkey”, which I mostly remember for Mah Mah trying to get with Big Wang Bai in a “youthful holiday wig”. And to my pleasant surprise, they managed to get Amy Hill and Tzi Ma back for the voices. Maybe one day we’ll actually get an episode where the whole Ling family is together, including Gwen, who also just had her first appearance in awhile, but that may just be a matter of expense considering how much even bringing them back. Some day, some day. But enough navel gazing at continuity, let’s talk about this new episode, which is actually pretty fun! I tend to like when American Dad leads into the genre send ups, in this case an urban treasure hunt (which also brings to mind that peanut conspiracy episode from the second season…OH GOD DAMMIT DAVID, FOCUS. This is why you need to take your zoloft every day!), and it also gives us a rarely used character combo of Francine and Steve with Bah Bah.
And speaking of characters with oddly long absences between appearances who previously appeared in holiday focused episodes, we also have the second appearance of Bradly Whitford as Vic Mancuso, who we first saw in 2020’s Christmas special episode, “Yule. Tide. Repeat.” where he was just a negligent wealthy mall developer who only caused a bunch of deaths in one of the voided timelines. Here, he’s the “surprise” antagonist after the same ancient treasure that Bah Bah has been after, and also likes changing his suits a lot. He should really play more scenery chewing bad guys. Anyway, this is all to say that this is a really fun episode, bringing back characters we haven’t seen in years for a neat story. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s full of what I’ve come to love about the show over the years and its various channel hops, and I would probably put it at the top of my rankings for this season so far. Of course, we’re not even halfway through this season yet, so we could very well see a better episode soon, especially with the four hundredth episode right around the corner. And we won’t have to wait two weeks for an episode for the foreseeable future, as the next three episodes are coming out consistently one after the other for the next three weeks!
