Review: American Dad “The Talented Mr. Dingleberry”

Just a puppet on a lonely string. Oh, who would ever wanna be king?

Overview (SPOILERS BELOW)

It’s talent show audition day at Pearl Bailey High (that’s the name of Steve’s school, in case you forgot. I know I did), and Steve is ready to bring his crooning pipes to the stage. Or at least he would be if rival singer A.J. Slick hadn’t gotten him to swallow furniture polish and ruin his shot. In desperation for revenge, he turns to Roger, who digs up an old persona and a nightmarish transformation into a ventriloquist dummy (because of course) named Dudley Dingleberry to get Steve back in the running. The act goes off well enough until it becomes clear that Roger’s role as Dingleberry has swallowed his normal personality into a win-seeking monster who has been horribly injuring or killing the other talent show contestants, depending on whether they are a supporting character or guest star. Steve manages to save Snot from on-stage death in the nick of time and snap Roger out of it, and also Stan and Hayley work on homemade remedies while Francine has allergies, which is such an anemic plot it doesn’t even deserve its own sentence.

OUR TAKE

Like a lot of these episodes this season, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. In this case, the something is “Roger becoming completely enveloped in a persona to the point of either comedy or fear”, and to that end, it’s not that bad. The whole living puppet angle was definitely an untapped flavor of creepy-funny the show hadn’t tried and gave me a vibe of reading old Goosebumps books as a kid (or at least watching the relatively new movie). Some episodes use this story idea and these personas as a way of exploring things about Roger he tried to hide (Season 5’s “The One That Got Away”, with the straight-laced Sidney Huffman), confronting insecurities of his about identity (Season 13’s abrupt take over of Meredith Field’s life in “The Dentist’s Wife”), or simply becoming too absorbed in a strongly written character he created (“Ricky Spanish”, just…”Ricky Spanish”). Unfortunately, the slip ups here get mainly explained away by the fact that the face paint Roger used to become the role “may cause temporary psychosis”, as the label puts it. I know this is American Dad, and I shouldn’t expect much better, but they clearly have done so before. Still a fun time, though. And a serviceable bar to lead us into the finale next week.