Not too shocking of an episode setup here: Steve and Roger (again in “Steve’s brother” guise) run away from home for something as trivial as one would expect (in this case, Stan asserting his dominance by using the boys’ rain gauge as a Margarita cup).  Steve and Roger wind up enrolling in a private academy, “Pendlingtonton”, which turns out to be an all-girls school, and the entire setup plays out as a fourth-wall breaking sitcom, complete with unseen live studio audience.  They quickly befriend roommates Spitz and The Babe, the only two lesbians in the school who are oblivious to each other’s romantic potential, to stymie the Headmistress’s constant attempts to expel Steve.  Roger eventually figures out the entire thing is actually a “spinoff” – Steve is the “big dog” in his own show, but he decides he’d rather be back home, so they have to sabotage it so the show can’t succeed and gets canceled.

B-plot: A series of irritating sitcom-cliché characters randomly show up at the Smiths’ house to replace Steve in Stan’s life, each more grating than the next (actually it was only two… this joke would have been better served with a third or more). Not all that entertaining on its own, but does a decent job making Stan realize he misses Steve just in time for Steve to come home.

Episode grade:  B-

Random observations:

“That’s you, baby, the BIG DOG!  Ruff ruff!” “Ruff ruff!”

All the tiny Tuttles were… cute?  Creepy?  Two things?

I love Rachael MacFarlane, but you can always tell when she’s voicing another character besides Hayley.

“Hey, don’t tell Steve, but I scissored the headmistress of the school we went to! Cool, right?” “Pretty cool, I guess.”