Review: American Dad “Jeff and the Dank Ass Weed Factory”

Come with me…and you’ll be…in a world of MJ inhalation…

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the face of rising marijuana legalization, Stan’s stance on stoner culture and Jeff in particular is harsher than ever. That is, until famed and mysterious distributor Tommy Tokes starts releasing golden tickets in his blunt wraps, with winners allowed inside for a secret tour which Bullock wants Stan to infiltrate in order to secure the “Everlasting Edible”. When Jeff becomes the last winner, Stan begs to be his plus-one, and so ends up going on the tour and meeting Tommy Tokes, who is played by Snoop Dogg. Though frankly I’d be more surprised if he wasn’t.

The other winners slowly get picked off one by one through their own lack of impulse control while Stan and Jeff bond, including coming across the Everlasting Edible, which Stan chooses not to steal. And then later it turns out he DID steal it and pretended to like Jeff this whole time, so Snoop Dogg has him sent to be turned into a purple Oompa Loompa. Jeff, being a good person, saves him, though Stan is both disfigured and really really high, so Jeff has to be the one to guide them out. Snoop tries to stop them, but Jeff’s ability to navigate a constant state of being high allows them to escape. Stan now approves of Jeff…at least until the next time they end up in an episode together, in which case he’ll probably hate him again.

OUR TAKE

I’m starting to realize some of the major challenges with reviewing shows like this. First of all, comedy is probably one the most subjective things since tastes in it can be so different, so trying to make a critical observation about it is only going to end up being based on what I find funny…and the dynamics of comedy are a lot farther out of my analytical expertise than story and characters.

The other is that, in describing the plot of the episodes of these types of shows, I usually have to skip over a lot of the little gags that happen throughout it, making it seem like the plot is a lot hollower than it really is, which isn’t my intention. What American Dad, like every other Seth MacFarlane show, does to make it worth the twenty minutes is overload itself with jokes at every point that just aren’t part of the story. Those just don’t show up on a summary of the episode is all.

So, as for this episode, I’m happy to say it’s about as good as I was expecting. Like I mentioned in my review of “Flavortown”, I’ve been enjoying Jeff based episodes more lately because they really stretch the show to its most weird, and so a Willy Wonka parody centered around weed lends itself really dang well to being really dang weird. So much so that I’m honestly wondering if this kind of parody hasn’t been done before, but I’m not gonna look up whether or not that’s the case.

It also made me realize something about Jeff and Stan’s dynamic, particularly that them being at opposite ends of personality is kinda what the show used to have between Stan and Hayley back when it was an old conservative man versus a young liberal daughter. Now Hayley’s kind of in the middle and doesn’t complement Stan as well as she used to. That actually makes me wonder if the show wouldn’t benefit from doing some major status quo change like putting her at the CIA for at least a little bit. It would reek of desperation for a long running show to grab people’s attention in its later seasons, but I think it would be a novel idea for a certain period of time.

Anyway I liked this episode a lot and hope that next week can continue this solid streak. More like this please!