In which Stan hijacks Hayley’s thing

The Stan/Hayley conflict is essentially the original basis of the show (what if All in the Family but updated and animated). The show has grown passed that but often returns to it for general conflict instead of the driving force of the show. That’s the case this week.

Hayley is running her Girl Scout troop, which surprises Stan, even though he should have known about it for the past 20 something years if he paid attention to Hayley’s life at all. Stan doesn’t care until he gets ticketed for crashing in to the flag pole in front of the CIA. He worms his way into Girl Scouts as substitute form of community service. He’s totally disinterested at all, falling asleep instead of helping most of the time. However, after the girls get a participation trophy at a competition, Stan imagines himself in their spot and jumps on their side. He pushes Hayley out to become troop leader and jumps on the feminism cause. He and the girls do things like sell turkey legs and build robots.

Hayley tries to get revenge by crashing Stan’s crypto currency but the girls thwart her. She leaves the troop and starts a rival troop. Eventually the girls land at a robot building competition. Stan’s scouts win but Stan realizes what a jerk he’s been after seeing a similar thing with one of his scouts and her dad. He tries to make up with Hayley but his scouts turn on him and send the robot to kill both of them. After the scouts let him and Hayley live because it’s not worth it, Hayley and Stan make up and leave.

Over on the B-Plot, Steve tries to escape his real world problems by imagining himself as Merlin’s assistant in a fantasy world. However, he keeps getting shocked out of it when it turns out that world is just as bad as the real world. His worries in the fantasy mirror the real world. He can’t get Merlin’s clothes repaired Even his therapist can’t help. To be frank, I think this B-Plot would have been a solid idea to build a non-canon episode around. Like West to Mexico.

Stray Observations

• Merlin was voiced by Jared Harris.

• One of the mom’s at the robot competition appeared before but I can’t remember where or when
• Miller Time is when you go down to the pub with the Millers and get drunk of Coors Light
• The show has more non-traditional openings than ever these days.
• The lack of images is due to me being unable to find any.

Thoughts

Solid episode for me. Stan and Hayley conflicts are decent and I enjoyed the killbot at the end. And Steve’s plot was funny even though as I said it could have been its own thing.