American Dad! is set to return to Fox later this weekend with a brand new season 12 years after it was cancelled with the network, and there are many great episodes that fans might have missed out on with its second life on TBS. Rather than being outright cancelled like fans saw with Family Guy years before, American Dad! was instead saved by TBS and moved over to the network in the midst of the animated series’ 11th season. But for those fans who didn’t make the jump along with it, you missed over a decade of notable episodes you need to catch up on.
American Dad! might have had a strong run with Fox, but it had a much longer run for its tenure at TBS. As it gets ready to head back to Fox with a new wave of episodes, it’s now the best time to go back and catch up on any of the seasons you might have missed in action. Not only are some of these episodes much better than everything that came before, but there were many that experimented quite a bit with their format to great results. Read on below for ten great episodes of American Dad! from its run on TBS.
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10). Persona Assistant
Coming during Season 13, you kind of need to just get “Persona Assistant” out of the way if you didn’t see any of the TBS episodes. This is the episode that introduces another major side character, Rogu, who grows out of a tumor in Roger’s head when he stresses about all of the Personas he has around town. Rogu has become such a hilarious long time player with American Dad! in the time since, and it’s best to get to know him before he suddenly makes an appearance in the new Fox episodes. Rogu does need an explanation for his existence, after all.
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9). Rabbit Ears
The older Fox season had their fair share of experimental episodes, but Season 14’s “Rabbit Ears” was the TBS era’s first truly big experiment. This episode sees Stan finding an old abandoned TV, and he starts to get obsessed with a show that starts to broadcast on it. Not finding anything about it online, his obsessive watching leads him to be dropped into the show itself and needing to escape a deadly monster that wants to trap him there. It’s also got a fairly dark, Twilight Zone-esque ending, and it makes for a great episode of the series to watch.
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8). No Weddings and a Funeral
Season 14’s “No Weddings and a Funeral” is an episode that tackles Klaus’ role in the family head on. Tired of being picked on by all of them (which had increased a great deal in the later seasons), he ends up leaving. A flash forward moving things years ahead reveals that the family is much worse off without Klaus to pick on, and it’s a hilarious potential future for them. It’s one future of many that we would see in the years to come, and it still delivers by making Klaus the butt of an even bigger joke. It’s a fun one that you should watch especially if you hate Klaus.
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7). 300
Much like the Episode 100 and Episode 200 specials before, “300” really goes all out for its milestone in Season 15. The Golden Turd saga had been brewing in the background for a very long time, in the Fox era specifically, and finally came to a head with this episode. It might have been a story on the sides, but this time the saga takes the spotlight and completely rewrites the overall timeline as a result. It’s great to see how the family falls apart thanks to its power, and was certainly worth all those years of waiting for a payoff that no one ever expected to ever come. Just a surprise all around.
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6). The Last Ride of the Dodge City Rambler
Some of the best American Dad experimental episodes don’t need to throw out the entire timeline either. Season 15’s “The Last Ride of the Dodge City Rambler” sees the Smith Family all getting on the titular train for its last ride in order to visit the never before seen or mentioned Aunt Karen, and it’s not long before it’s attacked by hijackers. The episode then goes into the usual tropes of such an idea, but takes them to a hilarious level by exaggerating its characters like making Steve someone who really loves trains inside and out. Roger and Hayley also meet Prince, and that’s just one of the fun and wacky things that happen.
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5). A Roger Story
Although this Season 16 episode is titled “A Roger Story,” it uses Roger as a conduit to tell a much more hilarious Steve and Snot story. Their friendship has been put to the test in a number of different episodes across both the Fox and TBS eras, but this is the first time their mothers get any focus. When the two of them stop hanging out and force Steve and Snot to stop seeing each other, Steve and Snot end up dying by accident and their mothers need to track them down in Hell.
It’s a great sequence of events that see their mothers completely sacrifice themselves for their sons’ friendship, and Stan is the only one that remembers at the end of it all thanks to tattooing reminders on his body.
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4). You Are Here
Season 17’s “You Are Here” doesn’t start like a traditional American Dad episode, and instead kicks off like a small office documentary following Roger as he works in a dying shopping center. After Steve gets a job there, the series then reveals what’s actually happening as it turns out that there’s an ancient vampire threat that wants to harvest the souls of anyone who happens to step into it. It’s an episode hilariously teasing that many of the characters that Steve meets are ghosts, and even reveals who was at the end. Just a fun time to be had overall.
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3). Echoes
Season 17’s “Echoes” doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a standard episode of American Dad when it begins either. As it posits the nature of the multiverse and alternate timelines, Steve decides to start an internship at the local news station and becomes infatuated with the weather machine. The doppler was meant to predict the weather, but each time Steve uses it he gets a new glimpse into the future. It’s not long before it leads to the emergence of an otherworldly creature that destroys the world, and it pretty much does end like many of these American Dad episodes do. By just wiping it all away.
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2). Fellow Traveler
Season 18’s “Fellow Traveler” actually gave us Roger’s origin story. Though American Dad has toyed with this idea in the past, it’s never actually fully dived into it like seen here. Following Roger as he first crash lands in Roswell back in the 1960s, the episode reveals many kooky personalities that he would later form his personas around. It was a great episode that further dug into why he chooses to dress the way he does (and retconning the decision to do so in its earliest seasons), and just a great Roger episode overall. Make sure to see this one if you love Roger especially.
20th Television Animation
1). What Great Advancements!
Serving as the final episode of Season 19, and the final episode of the TBS era overall, “What Great Advancements!” is an incredible episode to go out on. Set in an alternate, silent, black and white world, Stan is a humble farmer who dreams of making it big and getting rich in the city as an inventor. It’s not long before he invents a device that gives people the ability to speak, and this gets him to where he first dreamed.
Naturally, things go too far and he invents a device that gives the world color. Business rivals, jealous enemies and more try to take it away, and everything falls apart for Stan in the chase. He loses everything he worked for, but learns a great lesson along the way. It’s a rather artfully told story for the episode, and ended up being the perfect sunset on such a notable era of American Dad’s history.
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