In which Stan, Francine and Roger have the perfect plan but then don’t

As we head into the end of American Dad’s second decade on the air (ignore the season numbering convention, I basically have), we see it still being able to generate interesting stories and deliver laugh out loud moments. And this at least the second season premiere in a row to play with genre conventions and entertain. It manages to keep the story fresh even if the idea isn’t exactly new.

Francine and Roger attend the opening of the new Langley Falls Grand Grocer, a Whole Foods-esque high end grocery store, with a lot of non-food related sections in the store. This also includes a bank. And when they run into Stan (who curiously decided to come to the opening but not tag along with Francine and Roger) they get to talking about the robbing the bank that’s inside the Grand Grocer. As a thought exercise only, they bandy back and forth ideas for the perfect heist.

Sometime later, they hear a news report about the robbery of the grocery store bank using their ideas for the heist. They rush to the police to report the crime but discover that they were the ones that pulled off the heist after they find videos on Roger’s phone of them planning it and then taking Liflafluvia, a memory-erasing drug. They rush back to the house to discover that they actually did do the heist but can’t remember where they stashed the money.

Here it turns into a race to recover the money before detective Turlington (returning but voiced in this episode by Craig Robinson) gets wise. Things escalate in a very American Dad! way where the trio burns down the Grand Grocer (and probably kill a whole bunch of customers/recurring characters) but don’t retrieve the money and they won’t remember it thanks to Liflafluvia. In the end our trio is just happy(?) that they burned down the grocery story.

Stray Observations

• Welcome back Dadders! We kick off our season 21 coverage and it looks like we’ll be getting at least 6 straight weeks of new episodes.
• No B-plot to speak of and little appearance from the rest of the Smiths. Except to inform us Mah Mah and Bah Bah might be dead.
• We get a Gold Top Nuts reference and an appearance by Dr. Ray in the grocery store but he’s probably dead again.
• Mayor Garfield is surprised in a bad way by the integrated grocery store but the real life President Garfield would have welcomed it

Final Thoughts A really solid debut from a show that can still entertain. The cameos, callbacks and general vibes were strong.