Review: American Dad “The Hand that Rocks the Rogu”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Steve covets his friends’ curly fries that they buy with their babysitting money. Although it’s not so much the fries that entice him, it’s what they represent. Francine won’t let Steve babysit because she feels he isn’t ready. Proving her point, Steve defies her. Unfortunately, the only person who will trust him to babysit is Roger.

Rogu, Roger’s former tumor, and current son, is forced to sit in the room while Roger’s prostitute character pleasures men. Not wanting his boy to pick up any more bad habits, Roger entrusts Steve with his safety. But first, he spouts off two Gremlin-esque rules: don’t feed him any candy, and don’t allow him any screen time. Steve, a hollow disciplinarian, lets Rogu have some candy almost immediately which causes the little guy to multiply into a few dozen full-size Rogus.

Meanwhile, Stan wants nothing more than to join the CIA’s exotic food club. Sadly, a man of Stan’s intellect and education doesn’t understand the meaning of exotic and tries to feed the group canned oysters and an Entenmann’s coffee cake. The fancy group refuses his offerings, hoping for something a little more alien.

Relying on Klaus to help wrangle the many Rogus, Steve hypocritically gets angry when the fish breaks rule number two by sitting the many aliens in front of a tablet. The terrible video on the tablet causes the Rogus to merge with one another, creating a single, giant abomination—a.k.a., a big Rogu. After the monstrous grey, ugly alien destroys the town, Steve rocks Rogu to sleep in an amusement park Viking ship which shrinks him back to his normal size. But the damage has already been done. The CIA’s exotic food club knows about Rogu and wants to eat him.

Steve tells his mom, who despite being disappointed, agrees to help her son rescue Rogu along with her Mom Club. Despite their best efforts, the exotic foodies have already eaten Roger’s son. But Rogu, not being your average gross alien, bursts out of all those CIA member’s stomachs and puts himself back together. Covered in blood and viscera, Francine apologizes to her son and agrees that he is indeed ready to start babysitting in earnest.

 

Our Take

This was a rough one to get through. While Steve episodes are often delightful romps inside an atypical high school boy’s life, this episode lacked such levity. Steve’s goals weren’t compelling and they felt like an excuse to highlight Rogu—by far the worst member of the Smith household. And that includes Klaus!

Stan’s subplot didn’t add much either as it was eerily similar to his desire to join Ham Club a few weeks before. We already know Stan is insecure and that he cares way too much about what other people think. So if the creators of American Dad want to go to that well again—and so soon—they need to find a new angle, otherwise it’ll feel too repetitive like it did here.

Even though Francine’s screen time was limited, she was once again the episode’s stand-out star. We got a fresh look into Francine’s bizarre little life and were fortunate enough to meet her Mom Club. The members consisted of her typical crew: Linda, Greg, and Snot’s mom, but when pushed to the limit, they were far more kick-ass than they’ve been in the past. Hell, Snot’s mom straight-up killed a guy during the Rogu rescue.

Brushing Rogu aside, because he’s more of a catalyst for hijinks than an actual character, the bulk of the episode relied on the pairing of Steve and Klaus which simply didn’t work. Klaus is usually such a negative character and therefore his incessant need to help Steve didn’t ring true. Also, the buddy dynamic they developed as they chased the giant Rogu through Langley Falls felt more reminiscent of a Steve and Roger pairing.

Overall, the episode gave us some new interesting concepts like the exotic food club and Rogu’s annoying abilities. However, neither concept was developed enough which caused the storyline to crumble. A dark, eccentric club like the exotic foodies—not them exactly because they all died in the end—could lend itself to an interesting episode given the right script. Contrarily, I can’t imagine a great episode with Rogu as the central focus, but that doesn’t mean such an episode couldn’t exist.