Henry's World

Jeff finally gets a main story in an episode, and of course it's about stripping. This man can't catch a break. We open with Jesse, Roger's persona for this episode that he's very invested in, a stylist in a male erotic club who dreams of making chivalric cabaret a thing and opening his own club. Of course, it's hated by the horny female customers and mocked relentlessly by the rest of the Smith Family, and Roger, now in a wheelchair after coughing up some of his own spine, must team up with Jeff, a fellow outcast, to realize his dream. There's a lot of comedy to be mined from this pairing, especially with a motivated Roger and Jeff genuinely trying to help, as he goes into erotic dancing himself. It doesn't work, because of course, so Jeff turns to actual stripping to help pay for his motel fees, and ends up just sort of falling into being a male stripper. Probably the biggest drawback of this episode is Jeff's complete lack of agency, as he'...

It's unfortunate that a growing trend on American Dad appears to be episodes completely lacking in genuinely satisfying payoffs. Last week's "100 Years a Solid Fool" had an interesting premise, but lost sight of what makes the characters of Stan and Roger fun to viewers, and ended about as meekly as any I've ever seen from this show. Based on last season, I believe the AD writing team still has what it takes to craft an enjoyable story from start to finish, but a little more of my faith wavered this week. "Downtown" is a Hayley and Steve episode, and that pairing is probably American Dad's most inconsistent, generally good at delivering punchlines but lacking in emotional payoff. Not surprisingly, this episode has quite a few strong gags, as the two Smith children get involved in an escapade through an unnamed Langley neighborhood. Steve is attempting to take his pre-pre-SAT, a test his sister doesn't take seriously in any way, but the cla...

After over seven months on hiatus, failing to actually complete it's previous season and leaving viewers totally in the dark, American Dad has finally returned to television. In a world that absolutely needs a good laugh, could one of the best animated comedies in history deliver some? Well......... "100 Years a Solid Fool" wastes no time setting up it's A-plot, as Stan drags Steve and the family off to Little Columbia in Langley to laminate his library card. From there, he spins us a yarn, a tale stuffed with greed, betrayal, and mangoes. A young Stan steps up to take on one of Columbia's most notorious coke smugglers, El Narco, accompanied by Roger, who's disguised as an incredibly inept translator. It's very obvious Roger is El Narco, and at least the show doesn't try too hard to cover up this twist, as he almost immediately switches persona and kills all of Stan's team. It's a great set-up for another chapter in the Stan-Roger blood ...

Apologies for not posting anything over the past week or so, as I'm sure you can appreciate, these are strange and scary times and I just couldn't focus on doing blog work, plus I was somewhat burned out after two and a half months of pay-per-view reviews. When I last left you, I mentioned that I had a new series in mind, with the plan to start that up at the beginning of April. Unfortunately, those plans have fallen through. I've wanted to do something with the soon to be released Total Extreme Wrestling 2020 when it was announced last year, and my original idea was to start that up at the beginning of May, and do something shorter to cover for April. I had thought of doing something on Madden 20, or finally start up a series with Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball, two games I've wanted to cover for the past 3-4 years, but my biggest issue was with timing. I didn't want whatever I did to still be going by the time May rolled around, so I would need to...