TV

American Dad! Season 21, Episode 21, “Guardian”

In which Stan tries to help Steve and American Dad! squanders an interesting idea along the way…

A lot of American Dad! plots hang on the Stan/Steve dynamic. But what has somewhat shifted in the later years is a father who is inadequate for the needs of his son rather than a son who has disappointed his father by not being “man” enough. Today’s plot is one of the former but does it

Stan and his CIA coworkers are sitting around talking about their plans when Jackson says he has to look after Guardian, the CIAs dormant but dangerous AI machine. He also tries to get the guys to help him out but they all make excuses. They also try to find out about what their kids are going to be doing for college and Stan has no idea. Stan goes home to find out from Steve but he doesn’t know either and he’s more interested in memes. He asks for Stan’s help with math but Stan has no clue. So he calls Jackson and asks him to plug it into Guardian.

Jackson refuses but Stan ends up tricking him to allow Stan to use Guardian. Guardian solves the math problem but also manages to get into Stan’s phone. There it starts to take over. Eventually Stan and Steve are brought into the war room where Steve finds out that the math problem was solved by Guardian. Guardian decides to launch missiles to wipe out humanity but isn’t able to get to 100% annihilation. This gives Steve the idea to frustrate the machine by telling it that no matter what happens humanity will make stupid memes. This causes Guardian to crash. Stan and Steve make up after Stan declares that he doesn’t care that Steve is into dumb stuff.

Over in the B-plot the family once again sits around the TV. This time they are telling Roger about the phenomenon of Deja vu. Roger thinks at first they are messing with him but then starts to believe it. When the bombs start going off he freaks out and changes the channel, when the family reveals that of course they were messing with them. As far as TBS era B-plots go this was definitely one of them

Stray Observations

  • The TikTok has the hashtag American Dadders
  • The city of Boston got Dadded!
  • I never saw War Games
  • Yeah so…. like everyone, the writers definitely thought someone else was going to win the 2024 election
  • Looks like next week is the season finale so buckle up nerds and hope it’s a good one

Final Thoughts: A middle of the road episode with not a whole lot going on. This was better on paper than execution because there were a lack of jokes and the plot felt rushed.