In which Francine takes up gardening and unearths some Tremor worms

Escalation is the name of the game in American Dad! I think almost all the best plots start off fairly benignly and then escalate to something weird, while remaining engaging and funny. When this episode started, and with its description, I didn’t think we were up for an escalating plot. But it proved me wrong and delivered a really strong episode as we will discuss.

Francine is outside mowing the lawn when Al Tuttle stops by to tell her she’s being too loud. He has his garden club coming over and finds Francine’s noise too distracting. Francine wants to join the club but is rebuffed by Tuttle. She is jealous and tries to sneak in the club when she sees all the cool people over at Tuttle’s house. She fails but learns from the driver outside that anyone can join the club as long as they garden and pay the fee.

Francine tries to build a great garden but a simply flower and a goose statue with a Bazooka Sharks (Zooka Sharks!) jersey fails to impress Tuttle. She then turns to Mike Madonia, Roger’s latest persona, to help so that she can win the “best garden” award, to be presented by Kyra Sedgwick. With his advice, a visit to the Home Depot black market, and some worms, she builds a great garden with a fancy-ass goose and a pond. However, Tuttle, feeling extremely jealous destroys the garden. Feeling desperate to fix the garden, Franny goes back to the black market to get some plant steroids.

She sprays the stuff all over the back yard and hopes for the best. Overnight, the garden grows but unbeknownst to Franny so to do the worms. They tear up the garden, kill the goose and get loose. When Kyra Sedgwick (and her more famous husband, Kevin Bacon) show up to judge the gardens, the worms start attacking. A valiant attempt by Kevin Bacon to tell everybody about the Tremors worms leads to his death but Francine and Tuttle manage to lead the worms out of Langley and to their death under Madonia’s thresher.

Meanwhile the rest of the Smiths decide to take the advice of Klaus’s teabag and say yes to everything. This first leads them to try brand new things such as spicy food, but it eventually leads them to just say yes to staying at the Home Depot, which is a weird direction to take this particular plot. The plot obviously attempts to sideline the rest of the family while Franny, Klaus and Madonia deal with the garden and eventually the worms.

Stray Observations

• Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedwick voiced themselves in this episode, proving to be good sports about all of this. There’s even a nice callback to when Roger disguised himself as Kevin Bacon
• “She’s wearing a scarf and as a belt. And she’s wearing a belt as a scarf”
• Audrey II, the plant in Little Shop of Horrors, is part of the black market shop

Final Thoughts I really liked this episode. Mike Madonia is a weak name but a solid persona and the escalation to Tremors worms was handled brilliantly.