American Dad! Season 14, Episode 4
Portrait of Francine’s Genitals
Grade: A-

A whole bunch of pitch perfect gags liven up the standard plot this week as Stan gets insecure and jealous over a painting of his wife’s genitalia and Rodger attempts to capitalize. Shockingly, nothing is taken to extremes- Rodger doesn’t betray Stan, Steve doesn’t have some sort of breakdown over not being able to masturbate, and Klaus never really gets his comeuppance. Nor, really, does Stan. And he kind of deserves it this week. The gender politics of this episode are not… the best. The attitude that you ‘own’ your significant other’s genitalia is pretty awful and Steve’s sexual freakout about his mother seems like it should have been addressed as excessive in its own right.

[As a side note, wow is it awkward to google image search for a header image related to this episode’s title]

That said, the humor and the timing is quite good. Rodger’s spit take at breakfast, Stan breaking Dick’s face with the coffee mug (the first time anyway), Rodger’s Delmarva-bound baseball player’s spit take, the mad dash away from the encroaching edge of the cutaway at the art museum… it all felt fresh. Anytime a scripted show in its fourteenth season makes me wish for a longer running time is an accomplishment in and in of itself.

Random Observations:
Clean up on aisle mid-century post-modernism.

Well we’re off to the Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Met. With any luck that will get us hard. (Patrick Stewart just slays the line reading here)

Silvia, we have an intercom.

Once the plaster case dried, was that mug still my butthole?