"Kloger" (American Dad; Off-Topic)

Admit it. You wanted to see this episode happen for years.

I have two reviews coming up after this one. In one review, I take on the first Girl Meets World episode I thought was a bad sign of things to come. Call it a throwback if you will. And in the other one, I continue Mike's Quest. But before all that, I wanted to "break the fourth wall" and talk about an episode of one of my favorite shows that had me stopping dead in my tracks. I watched it on Tuesday and even now, more than a few days later, I still don't believe it actually happened. I refuse to believe the writers actually decided to go through with this, and actually thought this would make for entertaining television. But unfortunately, they did, and even a show as brilliant and clever as this one is prone to some awful episodes.

American Dad is undoubtedly one of the best comedies that I have ever seen. Four years ago, that wasn't the case. I always saw it as a Family Guy ripoff, and in the beginning, it probably was. However, after hearing several positive reviews about it, and seeing how much people adored it compared to Family Guy, I decided to give it a chance and I never looked back. This series is one of those shows that won't get the mainstream recognition and boatloads of Emmys given to other comedies, but will be remembered as one of the best underrated shows ever made. The show has a unique, otherworldly DNA that separates it from many others on television and allows itself to create unconventional, provocative plots from everyday situations. An episode about Steve losing Stan's trust will end with Stan trying to get his multimillion dollar drone back from the Chinese mafia. Or Roger's obsession over being cheated out of twenty bucks driving a limo will see him track down everybody that stiffed him and kill them all, ending with his limo on the wing of an airplane and crashing through it to kill the last person on his list. I say this because it's important to know why American Dad is so special. It took what worked from the early years of Family Guy, everyday sitcom plots, and a shotgun blast of creativity and insanity to create an animated show that many believe is Seth MacFarlane's best work.

However, nothing can last forever, and in 2013, the times began changing for AD. TBS picked up the show that summer for a new season of 15 episodes, meaning that season nine (2013-2014) would be the last one on Fox. You know what, just for a minute, I'm going to clear up the whole season discrepancy thing because I don't think anyone's really sure what season we're in right now so for the sake of this review, I'm going to let you know what I think it is:

Season 1 (2005-2006), Season 2 (2006-2007), Season 3 (2007-2008), Season 4 (2008-2009), Season 5 (2009-2010), Season 6 (2010-2011), Season 7 (2011-2012), Season 8 (2012-2013), Season 9 (2013-2014; this includes the final three episodes Fox aired of the show in September 2014), Season 10 (2014-2015), Season 11 (2016), and Season 12 (2016-present).

Yeah, so that takes care of that. Anyway, while season nine was underway, it was announced in November 2013 that co-creator and co-showrunner Mike Barker would be leaving the show due to creative differences. I'm not sure what those differences were and I can't find anything that explains it so my guess is that TBS wanted the show to be edgier, broader, and more appealing to casual viewers. Barker was probably told by all these people who he's never worked for in his life how to run the show when he had put his all into doing that for nine years. Add to the fact that the show was old, and all of those factors had Barker heading for the hills. Just a theory.

While in 2017, I would much rather watch a new American Dad episode than a new Family Guy episode, there's no doubt anymore that the show changed after season nine. The move to TBS, Barker's departure, and the constant turnover of writers was just leading to the inevitable. And season ten wasn't the best sign that the show was going to be the same as it had always been. While there were some definite gems ("Dreaming of a White Porsche Christmas," "LGBSteve," "Morning Mimosa"), some episodes were pretty unremarkable ("Blonde Ambition," "My Affair Lady," "A Star is Reborn"), and at least one of them is among the worst the show has ever done ("American Fung"). Season eleven was actually a step in the right direction, with a much higher batting average, and a lot of entertaining ones ("Hayley Smith, Seal Team Six," "The Two Hundred," "The Unincludeds," "Next of Pin") to make it the best TBS season so far.

But here with season twelve, it really looks like the show is struggling to keep itself from feeling long in the tooth. And if they have to resort to ideas like "Kloger," it might be time to put it to rest before it embarrasses itself further and begins having a string of terrible seasons, like every other show that has come before it. If you can't tell from the title, Roger and Klaus start dating. Yeah, that's what happened. Roger and Klaus start having mind-blowing, hardcore sex and try to keep their relationship a secret from the family. I'm not joking. This isn't fan fiction (someone most likely wrote this already, but that's besides the point). A professional writer actually thought of this idea and then assigned the idea to another writer to turn it into a script. And then they did a table read for it. And then they recorded the voices. And then they.......you get it.

I'm still trying to figure out how this idea wasn't thrown out and never spoken of again. Look, Roger has done so many disgusting, sickening things over the years. But besides the thought of him dating Klaus being disturbing enough, why would he be attracted to him? Roger hates Klaus, it's one of the most established features of the show. Klaus has been straight for the entire series, and now all of a sudden, he thinks it's hot to be in Roger's mouth, lick his toes, spank his ass, and make love to him? This story makes no sense for either character and is the epitome of sacrificing who they are for the sake of a plot. Roger is so desperate for companionship, he wants to lay down with Klaus and start going on dates with him? Half the time, he doesn't even want to hang out with Klaus or talk to him. And there's nothing interesting about their romance or any insight into why they would suddenly have this intense, burning attraction for each other. It's just them having sex and making out. It's shallow in a way that Family Guy usually is, not American Dad.

Another reason this episode failed was because nobody cares about the relationship. One thing that makes these plots interesting and give some humor to these awkward situations is the opposing side. Nobody was disgusted by Roger and Klaus' romance or condemned it. It's just them reacting to it like these two had been living in an apartment for years together and finally decided to explore their feelings for each other. In the past, when American Dad would do plots like this, the characters would act like human beings reacting to situations like people in real life would. "Pulling Double Booty" had Stan's body double start dating Hayley. Of course, Francine doesn't know this, so when she sees Hayley making out with the body double, she freaks out at Stan and it leads to one of the funniest scenes in the entire series. Even after Francine finds out the truth, she's still disgusted by it. Or take "Virtual In-Stanity" for instance. Stan is so desperate to spend time with Steve that he uses the CIA's virtual reality machine to create a teenage girl for Steve to date, and even offers to have sex with him. Bullock is even shocked by what Stan's doing, and Francine loses it when she finds out. Meanwhile, we're still on Stan's side because all he wants is to make up for all the times he wasn't there for his son. There were actual stakes to these episodes and a reason to care about them through the awkwardness. Plus, the topic of incest was handled with sophistication.

Here, it's just Roger is lonely and looking for love for some reason. Klaus pretends like he doesn't want to be in a relationship. They find each other through online dating. They start dating in secret. Stan and Francine find out, Klaus realizes he was only into Roger because of the sneaking around, and breaks up with him. Roger becomes a mess trying to win Klaus back, and then he realizes that he was only with Klaus because he didn't want to be alone, all while going insane in solitary confinement.

There's a small indication of conflict here when Roger and Klaus decide not to tell the family, but once Stan and Francine find out, they're not disgusted or weirded out or even curious as to how it happened. They act like parodies of themselves and decide to have a double date with them. A lot of this episode comes off like it doesn't even know itself why it exists, outside of just wanting attention. Roger and Klaus dating is a tough plot to pull off, and even tougher now since the bar has been lowered on TBS, but there was still a chance to make it work. This show has made some of the strangest things in the world work. It made Roger having a crush on Hayley work, and that ended with Roger cutting off all of Jeff's skin and wearing it just to feel closer to Hayley. Of course, in that episode, it worked because Roger didn't want to have feelings for Hayley. Maybe if Roger and Klaus got really drunk, and woke up disgusted with themselves but questioned if they could be together, it could have been more interesting. But instead, they go the Family Guy route and just have them suddenly wanting to bone each other 24/7 like horny high school kids. I swear, this is up there with Brian giving Stewie herpes and Peter marrying Chris so he could gain his inheritance. It's really no different from those episodes, and if I had never watched this show before, I would write it off for good.

At the end of the day, this is just a really bad episode of television so it's important to keep things in perspective. Whatever American Dad does this Monday will probably end up making everyone forget about "Kloger." Besides, it's not like the show has been terrible for years now. But this is just another bad sign that the move to TBS wasn't exactly the best choice for the show's quality. It almost makes me wonder what would happen if it ended in 2014 and TBS never picked it up. Would this be an idea that would happen in the Mike Barker era? Maybe. But I feel like the execution would be a lot more thoughtful than what it was here.

Episode Grade: D
Episode MVP: Jeff, for having the only really funny line in the episode ("If I put as much work into working as I do into not working......I don't know.")

Hey it's Unknown! Well, not so unknown anymore but...yeah I'll get to that.

But I'll go ahead and say that Family Guy isn't really all that off-topic, as if it really matters. I mean, it is a cartoon and it does have a sizable teen fanbase even if that fanbase does skew middle-older but even so we've reviewed New MacGyver, the Minority Report TV show, several crappy comedies from NBC and even some crappy movies from Lifetime. So...yeah.

But I'm going to offer a minor, weak defense of Kloger in that...well, it probably wasn't thrown out during the drafting or table reading process because...it was a legitimate idea to try out. 

Now, that's not saying that all ideas are legitimate, that all ideas have equal legitimacy. As I mentioned in the Raven's Home review, it's a legitimately good idea to reveal that Raven Baxter is a lesbian, considering that both Raven-Symone is a lesbian in real life and there's even room to organically explain it into the plot, how Raven and Devon can remain good friends despite being divorced (not that being LGBTQ+ is required to have good relationships between divorced spouses). Now, having Raven decide to have a sexual (or implied sexual) relationship with Chelsea, now that's a terrible idea for exactly the reasons Mike went over with Kloger.

See, the legitimacy of an idea, at least when it comes to these TV shows, is entirely built up on context. R'sH has a certain context. Jessie, Liv and Maddie, Andi Mack...they all have a certain context that makes up the framework of their universes, and vice versa. But the beauty of American Dad! is that it's worked up its own universal framework so brilliantly yet casually that it's free to throw context out the window in the last act or so of every episode as Mike explained at length above.

So what to say is that...not to say that there's no such thing as terrible American Dad! episode ideas, but what might seem like a terrible idea for any other show might be an absolute brilliant one for this show.

So there are legitimate kernals of...maybe not brilliance but "let's try it out and see what happens" with Kloger, it just didn't pan out the way everybody thought it would in people's minds. There's shock value, but it's shock value marketed to an audience that's been desensitized to shock; there's legitimate curiosity value; there's a big "why the hell not?" factor that history has shown has potential to work with this show.

So...again, it's not that terrible ideas don't exist with this show, it's just that the nature of the show really blurs the lines between what truly is a terrible idea and what might actually turn out to be a great idea once you try it out.

EXTRA THOUGHTS
-I liked Roger referring to Steve as "Snot's friend with the glasses."

-Speaking of Steve, there's a subplot of his that doesn't really mean much, but keeps the episode from being completely irredeemable. He tries to get out of the Presidential Fitness Test by catching Hayley's pinkeye (ironically, I got pinkeye this week so Hayley most likely gave it to me), but when that doesn't work, he ends up shitting on himself to be excused. I wish I was making some of this stuff up, honestly.

-Honestly, the reveal of Roger and Klaus having sex didn't work for me. It would have been way more realistic (and potentially funnier) if they were just drunk and did something they regretted. Then they could explore their feelings for each other that way. But like I said before, they don't do anything you would expect them to (at least until they break up). They just act whatever way the plot asks them to. The worst part of the whole episode is that Kylie Minogue montage of the two fooling around in secret. It seriously didn't feel like I was watching the right show.

-Francine acting "urban" is a joke I feel would have been funnier in a different episode, but it's not that good here. Roger's comment about her being white does kinda save it, though.

-Part of me liked how Stan didn't really care about anything relating to Roger or Klaus, but that just speaks to how much the episode could have used his involvement. I just feel like Stan wouldn't want the relationship to happen more than anyone else.

-Well, I've written all I can. Next review will be more age appropriate.