TV

American Dad! Season 21, Episode 14, “The Girl Who Cried Space Jam”

In which Hayley goes Satanic

Hayley is a character originally conceived as a “liberal” counterpart to Stan’s 2000s Conservatism. This was the premise going into the show, a sort of All in the Family meets Family Guy (All in the Family Guy?) As the show changed over time and moved away from that, Hayley’s role has sort of become the criticism of the “Millennial” lazy, entitled, still liberal. But this has also kept on to also mean “hippy” in the flower child sense even though I would say they have nothing to really do with each other besides some sort of broad political stripe. And the marijuana usage. But that’s where we are with her character these days.

We arrive at this point because this episode has decided to use the Hippy label to call Hayley out on not being anything. The self-criticism, and I think it’s valid, is that once the show moved away from the All in the Family Guy mode, it had less to do with Hayley. So this episode kind of points a mirror at that, saying Hayley herself is undefined. That’s why she is able to become a Devil worshiper after being called out on not being a hippy. She tries to get back to her “hippy roots” but after a fortuitous visit to a Black Christian Church (with Roger in the background) she decides to become a Devil Worshiper.

The family calls her out on it but she sticks to her guns. So much so that she summons an actual demon (an outer space demon though). The demon says that he will challenge Hayley to a Space Jam but it turns out he was lying. Rather than let it go, Hayley decides to hold a fake Space Jam with help from Wayne Brady and the Smiths. The demon eventually does step in but everyone has enjoyed the game enough to forgive Hayley for the ruse. And thus even though she stops being a Devil Worshiper, she goes back to being Hayley.

Stray Observations

  • I didn’t recognize some of the public domain characters so sound off in the comments Dadders
  • Stan’s Satanic best friend, who later died in episode 100, has his picture at the meeting of the Devil worshipers.
  • “Some of those songs are covers of worse songs.”

Final Thoughts: The mini-Rennaissance of American Dad continues unabated with a fun episode dealing with Hayley and escalating to a crazy Space Jam.