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American Dad "I Am The Jeans: The Gina Lavetti Story" Review

Holy sh** that's a long episode title. If it were up to me, titles would only be two words of less. Bonus points if you know what that's from.




"I Am The Jeans: The Gina Lavetti Story" has a tremendously long title that is far more inventive than it's actual subject matter. This is another American Dad episode that just introduces a conflict we've never seen before or particularly care about, this time between Francine and one of Roger's personas, a woman named Gina Lavetti. Their friendship is almost at a breaking point, and provides an interesting shift in dynamics for both characters, as Roger in this persona lacks any sort of bravado. It's a unique take for both Francine and Roger, and one that mostly works. After not being able to fit in any jeans, Gina decides to make and sell her own, and needs constant support from Francine along the way. But this ends up backfiring, as Francine pushes too hard to get Gina a better air time on the Langley Home Shopping Network.


Francine's clash with the network leads to some weird West Side Story parody, there's plenty of Tuttle again and nothing feels important in any way. The episode also never really wraps up this conflict, as Gina just suddenly realizes that she used a piece of Roger's ship to make the jeans and then they turn all the women wearing them into zombies or something. Then Gina needs to give a speech to convince to convince everyone to take off their sentient jeans and I'm all out of f***s to give. This episode started with an interesting take on role reversal, but the specific roles that Francine and Roger take aren't interesting in any way. Business woman Francine and Gina Lavetti are both too far departed from their usual characters, and neither does anything in this episode to make it particularly memorable.


Role reversal is the theme of the episode, and in the B-plot, Stan and Steve end up swapping eyebrows. Somehow, this actually worked better than the main plot, as the fact that so much of their every day lives relies on eyebrows is so ludicrous it's fascinating. Plus, it was great to see Avery and the CIA guys back, even for a few moments. The fact that the secondary storyline with such a stupid premise and no real conclusion manages to be better than the main plot is very indicative of this episode's problems.


4/10


"I Am The Jeans: The Gina Lavetti Story" fails on the most basic of writing, as the main premise and conflict of the episode is completely unspectacular. But hey, they can't all be winners, it's gotta be difficult to come up with 22 incredible ideas per season. Now, if you'll excuse me, that floating potato in the sky wants me to start making vodka.

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