AMERICAN DAD! – “First, Do No Farm” (Season 17, episode 14)
American Dad continued to expand its sonic palette in 2020. In a season that already included The Weeknd, the show pulled off its biggest musical “get” in 2020 with Weird Al Yankovic.
The setup: Stan Smith thinks his daughter Hayley is getting “soft”. Fed up with her overly sensitive and lazy ways, he takes inspiration from the humble farmer. Stan bulldozes the family home and sets up a “micro farm” on the property, with only a shed for everyone to live in. Everyone adopts the Waltons-like surname “Boy”. “Steve-Boy”, “Jeff-Boy”, and “Mom-Boy” for example. Creature comforts are banished. Violators are shunned. Needless to say, Roger the alien is the first to be shunned. He soon takes up with the “varmints” — rabbits.
This, reasons Stan, will make Hayley-Boy “farm tough”.
To make a short story shorter, Stan screws up big time by building a secret basement with all the food, TV and video games you could desire. He too is shunned, and moves in with Greg across the street. But he has already created a monster in Hayley. Yes, she got tough, but she also lost her heart, turning into a cold, farm working machine. This is not what Stan intended, and so he must undo what has he done. With sabotage. Varmint sabotage. Rabbitage!
“Let’s do it!” says Roger. “And do we contact Weird Al’s people? See if he’s interested in ‘Rabbitage’ as a song idea?”
Cue up Weird Al Yankovic with my favourite Beastie Boys parody yet!
Well, I didn’t write the song, and this makes ZERO sense out of context, but yeah, that was me screeching out a Beastie Boys parody last night on @AmericanDadTBS pic.twitter.com/duEI6hgH1t
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) July 28, 2020
As Al says, he didn’t write the lyrics, but he sure did nail that vocal part! “Listen all a-y’all it’s a rabbitage!” wails Al, as Roger and his rabbit allies destroy the farm. Sure makes you wish they recorded a full song, doesn’t it? Pretty cool collaboration. Roger, dressed as a rabbit, destroying that farm in sync with Weird Al, is worth a repeat watch.
In the B-story, Klaus the goldfish has joined Scientology, which involves unsubtle Battlefield Earth jokes. South Park did it first and better. Scientology jokes are like shooting ducks in a barrel. Fun, but way too easy.
4/5 stars for the episode
10/5 stars for “Rabbitage”
I must look out for this episode of American Dad. Weird Al is brilliant!
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Yep, even if he didn’t write the lyrics, the vocal performance is spot on!
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I still have never seen a full episode of this show, but Weird Al is cool, and the Beasties are cooler!
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I stream them…whoops I shouldn’t have admitted that!
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Why not?
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Illeeeeeeeeeeeegal!
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Isn’t Netflix streaming? I don’t understand the whole thing, to be honest. My kids know how to work it and showed me all I needed to know.
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Netflix got rid of the show a couple years ago. Don’t have a clue why.
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Follow the money, someone else offered them more I’d wager.
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Yeah I figure they’re on one of the many services that I don’t subscribe to. Oh well.
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You tried!
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The only thing I haven’t tried in a while (year and a half) is VPN. That’s a service where you can access US Netflix, UK Netflix, or whatever anywhere in the world. I used it for a few months for fun in 2019.
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We had one of those on our computers but mine’s so old it just didn’t like it.
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It worked on my 10 year old laptop, but you need a great internet connection or you can’t stream. Anyway I had it for about 6 months. At that point I felt I had watched everything I wanted to watch. LOL
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There’s always HNIC!
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Al would be the only reason I watch it. I have never seen an episode because this is nothing like life as an American Dad. It is not the show is too far fetched…it isn’t far fetched enough to even remotely ring true!! :-)
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What you don’t live with an alien in your attic??
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I’m afraid to go in to my attic. It’s dark and scary up there. So, there could be one up there.
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There could also be forgotten albums up there….
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Sadly, no. We don’t actually store anything up there as there is not much room.
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:(
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The Weird Al review, as promised!
And 10/5, it doesn’t get much better than that!
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I knew you’d like that Geoff. That would mess up a graph!
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I like that, the y-axis of 5 would be insufficient!
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