American Dad!: Kiss Kiss Cam Cam Review

Marital woes, polluted water, and lots of baseball add up to a grand slam of an American Dad!

This American Dad! review contains spoilers.

American Dad!: Season 12, Episode 6 

“Who even drinks water anymore? Have a Coke Zero, am I right?”

“Kiss Kiss Cam Cam” starts out strong with Stan being heavy with the best kind of nonsense. The topic at hand is Francine’s birthday, and yet before we’ve hit the opening credits we not only see Stan soaring the skies with a pack of 81 bald eagles, but then also making out with a sexy eagle woman (not before being beat up by her presumably eagle man boyfriend, Hank). Throw in a cameo by MC Scat Cat and you’ve got the makings for a fairly unhinged installment.

In perfectly Stan fashion, we see him turning Francine’s birthday into mostly being about him — where his interests are their interests and therefore her interests, which in this case translates to attending a lot of baseball. Frankly, at this point you’d think we’d be past the “Stan ruining Francine’s birthday” storylines, but this one has a bit of a deeper cut to it with the implication that Stan and Francine are growing apart in the long term.

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While Stan and Francine’s marriage appears to be the focus here, this ends up feeling more like an excuse to check off a bunch of baseball gags that American Dad! hasn’t been able to use yet. Admittedly, Francine’s earnest request for a “large spaghetti” at the stadium made me laugh a lot more than it should have (as well as her colloquially calling uncircumsized penises, “wormies”) and Stan’s training/re-entry montage is one of the better jokes to come out of the season so far.

This culminates in a pretty great Kiss Cam gag that doesn’t go in the direction that you’d expect it to, as well as fitting the kind of “more outrageous” American Dad! that TBS seems to advertise. This surprisingly turns into the catalyst of the episode where Stan views a redemptive kiss on the Kiss Cam being proof of his and Francine’s compatibility.

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Steve and Roger have a pretty heavy story that interrupts their perfectly innocent Huge Cookie Time. Due to the damage of one of Roger’s many personae, the residents of Carson City, Nevada are all dying as a result of a poisoned water situation. This is all pretty wonderful, as Roger explains that his Bert Jarvis character ran for congress in Nevada in order to eat for free, but after upon learning that the benefit does not include free drinks, he discarded the character like the lives of so many Nevada residents. I’m always a fan of stories where Roger’s fleeting attention span ends up having severe consequences for someone else, and Steve acts as the perfect moral compass to drag “Bert Jarvis” back to Nevada and help these people (giant cookie be damned).

Roger and Steve face an uphill battle where the crooked politicians of Nevada (of both the big and small) keep trying to block their clean water legislation. Things become a little more complicated when the main polluter that they’re up against, Tetraduel, is — of course — run by another of Roger’s personalities.

When it comes to the Weekly Klaus Check-In, he’s writing for Buzzfeed now (and killing it), by the way, but his e-mails are kind of getting out of control, you guys…

Common sense eventually reigns supreme here, succinctly wrapping up both of these stories in a matter that’s satisfying enough while still inflicting some mass carnage at the same time. It’s the perfect sort of mock sweet conclusion that can remind us that happiness is communal HPV diagnoses. With the run that American Dad! has been having lately, and their 200th episode looming soon, it seems that the series has found some sort of groove back into things. If this is the quality of episodes that we routinely receive, you won’t see me complaining.

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And hang in there Francine, you weren’t the only one that liked John From Cincinatti.

Rating:

4 out of 5