Transcript for Episode 64: American Dad Steals a Gay Couple's Baby
This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the American Dad episode “Surrogate.” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.
Stan: I don't believe it. I let them be gay and this is how they repay me?
Hayley: What's that supposed to mean?
Stan: If two men want to open up to each other and share a love more sweet and exquisite than anything a man and woman could ever find together, then that's their problem. But when they try to bring a child into it, I got to put my foot down!
Francine: Well, excuse me, but who are you to say whether they should have kids?
Stan: A concerned American, Francine. I've always said you can't raise normal children in an abnormal environment. Do you know what that'll do to society? Girls playing with trucks, boys playing with dolls, horses eating each other! Yes, horses eating each other! Read the Bible!
["Good Morning USA" performed by Seth MacFarlane plays]
Drew: Hello, and welcome to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast where we talk about the LGBT-focused episodes of classic sitcoms, which is to say the very special episodes that also happen to be the very queer episodes. I'm Drew Mackie.
Glen: I'm Glen Lakin.
Drew: And in case that intro did not tip you off, today we're talking about American Dad!
Glen: Gasp.
Drew: Gasp. It might be a gasp for some people. Some people might not have been expecting this. The episode we're talking about is called "Surro-Gate." It is the seventh episode of the fourth season. It originally aired December 2—
Glen: Isn't it the third season?
Drew: No.
Glen: I thought Hulu told me it was third season.
Drew: It did. There seems to be some weird inconsistencies with how the seasons break up. According to Wikipedia this is fourth season, but according to Hulu it's the third season. I don't know. It originally aired December 2, 2007. I don't know why there would be that discrepancy. We're going to call it "Stan Smith is a Homophobe," or "Stan Smith Steals a Gayby."
Glen: I think "Stan Smith Steals a Gayby." He's not classically a homophobe in the episode, I don't think.
Drew: That is an interesting point which we're going to bring up in that his evolving take on homosexuality is weirdly more realistic than most TV shows where here it's not a one-and-done, like, "I like gays now." He has to constantly learn not to be a homophobe which—
Glen: We all do.
Drew: —we all do. The episode is about Francine offering to become a surrogate for Greg and Terry, the anchor husbands who are the neighbors to Stan and Francine, and Stan realizing that his acceptance of gay people has its limits. Glen, what is your experience with the "American Father" television series?
Glen: Well, Drew, I guess I was a latecomer to the show. I probably didn't get into it until—I don't know, fifth or sixth season, and I think it was a combination of three things: 1) an ex, 2) my brother being obsessed with Roger, rightfully so, and 3) a joke that is actually in this episode.
Drew: Yeah, that was weird that you mentioned that joke being on an Adult Swim promo, and then I'm like, "Oh. Well, this is the episode it came from."
Glen: Yeah. I was very excited to see it in context again.
Drew: I would not have guessed that this is the episode where that would have occurred, but it sure is. I remember watching the first airing of it, which was a post-Superbowl slot on Fox in 2005, and I was like, "This is garbage. I don't want to watch this." And then sheer boredom and being at home on Sundays made me eventually start watching it, and then I came to love the show. But I feel like a lot of people don't think American Dad! is a good show.
Glen: Well, they're wrong.
Drew: They are wrong. I think they just have it in their heads that it's just like Family Guy, and that if you don't like Family Guy you wouldn't like this, but this is actually a very different show than Family Guy is.
Glen: Yeah. I'd say it's closer to a King of the Hill than a Family Guy.
Drew: People are going to think that that is appalling, that you're comparing this Seth MacFarlane show to King of the Hill, because King of the Hill has held up as one of the best—and it is—but this show does have more in common with King of the Hill in that there's more of a sense of community that it takes place in. I guess Family Guy has that, too. But also, as wild as this show get sometimes (and it gets really wild), it is still a show about Red vs Blue, which is something that most sitcoms let alone animated sitcoms might do once or once a season, but this is at the heart of the show.
Glen: I think the difference between this and Family Guy is that Family Guy became more about the execution of their comedy rather than—not ideology—but some sort of messaging that the show is built on whereas I think the reason people were put off by American Dad!'s first season is that it leans too heavily into that twist of it being an attack on conservative values and modern America. I guess we were still dealing with and coming off of the George W. Bush era.
Drew: We were in the middle of it. He'd just been reelected when it went on the air.
Glen: Oh. Well, there you go. And so we were wrestling with that, and I think it took until the end of the second season for the show to embrace the strengths of the characters that they had built and didn't need to rely on that gimmick. Once it moved away from the gimmick and more of the plots came out of the characters and their relationships, I think it just had more unity than Family Guy, which I enjoyed for some seasons. It's just a different show.
Drew: We all watched Family Guy for a while, but when it started we were teenagers, and it was a good show for us in that we were in a good mindset to appreciate its style of humor. There are some jokes that Family Guy does that do make me laugh.
Glen: I mean, we have brought up the [inaudible 00:06:03] intro several times.
Drew: I'm not going to cut it into this episode—I might cut it into this episode. That still makes me laugh. I think it's really funny. So Family Guy is funny sometimes, but the majority of its jokes are just not for me. They're not my style of humor. Also, we can talk about the mechanics of delivering jokes. It is a joke-machine show. I know we've talked about it, but I don't know if I've ever explained joke-machine shows on this podcast before. I would say a joke-machine show is a show that's primarily there to fire off jokes rapidly, and it will sacrifice continuity or characterization or even the plot of a given episode to fit in a joke if they think the joke is funny. And it's not a bad thing—it's just how Family Guy works. 30 Rock is kind of a joke-machine show where it has a more flexible continuity and a goofier world than most live-action shitcoms—sitcoms. I think I said "shitcom." 30 Rock—I like 30 Rock. Even The Simpsons does this to an extent. King of the Hill, I would say, would be on the farther end where it almost never does that, and it has a very tight understanding of its world. They're both perfectly fine ways of making a show; they're just very different. Difficult People, the one with Billy Eichner and Jules—Jules—Julie Klausner? Is that her name?
Glen: That sounds like a name.
Drew: Difficult People on Netflix is a show that I thought was very, very funny.
Glen: Was that Netflix?
Drew: Or Hulu.
Glen: I think it was Hulu.
Drew: Okay. It was a streaming series, and it made me laugh out loud a lot, which a lot of sitcoms don't do. But they clearly were there to assault you with punchlines, and it happened to [inaudible 00:07:42] work for me. American Dad! is more towards the King of the Hill side, like you said. Also, American Dad! is in its 17th season right now. King of the Hill got 13 seasons. That will probably blow people's minds and probably make some people angry because even after everything we've just said they're still not going to give it a chance—but they should. Looking at American Dad!, it would be easy to dismiss it as a Seth MacFarlane show cloning a Seth MacFarlane show because the main six characters each map on to the Family Guy characters where the dad is kind of dumb, the mother is put upon, the son is a nerd, the daughter is probably the most different. Hayley's not really a Meg at all.
Glen: No—yeah, no. She's not as sad as Meg.
Drew: No. She's kind of dumb sometimes, but she has ideas, she gets out there. She dumps her boyfriend repeatedly because she's better than him.
Glen: Yeah. She also falls in love with a koala at one point.
Drew: She does. That's one of the ways this show is strange. And then there's a family pet that can talk but should not talk, and there's a character who's an agent of chaos—who's kind of gay?
Glen: I mean, he's Paul Lynde.
Drew: He's Paul Lynde. I heard "Poland" at first and was like, "He's not Poland." Stewie's also kind of campy and has a gay sensibility.
Glen: Yeah. Roger is, I guess, the Stewie of this show, but there's something that just survived better about his gimmick.
Drew: I think they're both sociopaths and they both kind of just do whatever they want and the results are funny. I think the big difference between Stewie and Roger is that you can sexualize Roger and it's not that weird because he is an adult, more or less, but when they sexualize Stewie it's kind of weird. I think there's limits to what you can do—
Glen: And his hot, stuffed-bear boyfriend?
Drew: Yeah. I think there's limits to what you can do with that. With Roger there literally is no limit to what they can do with him. He can literally be anything they want. He's kind of a secret weapon on the show.
Glen: Yeah. Strangely enough, Roger does not really factor into our gay conversation.
Drew: No. I watched three different episodes of this show to try to pick which one I wanted to do. Roger doesn't get a whole lot to do in any of the gay storylines because he's just kind of his own thing.
Glen: We should have a special episode, though, about the "10 Most Queer Roger Personas."
Drew: I'd be happy to do that. It is weird. He's such a thoroughly gay character kind of like in the way that Paul Lynde is a very gay celebrity and people just didn't talk about his sexuality. Roger's pansexuality kind of just is not commented on and is not really thought of as strange—like he can be male or female, and he has apparently a lot of sex and some people find him very attractive. Also, in the same way that Roger got expanded, they made the characters a lot goofier. Francine initially was just a put-upon housewife, but she has a very bizzarro viewpoint that gets expanded, and she's not like any other animated sitcom mom. She's just kind of in her own little world.
Glen: Yeah. One of the things I found interesting rewatching this episode is that it could have been so easy for them to make Francine a Karen to Stan's alpha-male, conservative, pro-government type. The counterpoint to that would have been to have—
Drew: An awful white woman?
Glen: Yeah. They didn't make her an awful white woman.
Drew: So you're meaning "Karen" in the current sense, not in the Will & Grace sense, which is what I initially thought.
Glen: Oh, no no no no no. I mean it in the current derogatory sense.
Drew: Like, she wants to talk to a manager?
Glen: Yeah. And they didn't make her that. It took them a while, I think, to find that sweet spot for her between lovingly naïve towards Stan and also carving out her own personality that wasn't just in rebellion to Stan the way Hayley is.
Drew: Mm-hmm. And also, she really sometimes just doesn't seem to care about anything, and it works. There's an odd, lazy apathy to her nature sometimes that is funny and allows her to be in her own little world. Glen, do you know what day American Dad! started airing on a week-to-week basis on Fox?
Glen: [silence]
Drew: Just guess.
Glen: Sunday.
Drew: May 1, 2005—which was a Sunday, yes. Do you know what day Family Guy started airing new episodes on Adult Swim after the show was canceled by Fox?
Glen: May 1st?
Drew: 2005—the exact same day. It is not a coincidence. Family Guy got canceled after its third season on Fox—canceled by my former boss Gail Berman, who also canceled Firefly and does not like being pointed out as the person who canceled Firefly but Gail Berman did cancel Firefly. Seth MacFarlane had been wanting to do a more politically focused show after Bush got elected, and that was his pitch to Fox, like, "Okay, so Family Guy is going away, but what if we do another show for you and it's shaped a little bit differently?" And Fox said yes, and it went into development. What they were not expecting is that Cartoon Network ended up buying the rights to make more Family Guy episodes relatively cheaply, and it went back into production around the same time, and so it put Seth MacFarlane's whole operation in a weird position where initially American Dad! was supposed to be the inheritor to Family Guy's everything, but now that Family Guy was going to be alongside American Dad! they had to find a way to make it different and realized that people weren't going to look on it as favorably because they could still just watch Family Guy. The weird thing that happens is that Seth MacFarlane—fairly successful as a showrunner—could have done the thing that a lot of successful showrunners do, which is keep making the same mistake you've made again and again. I have one prolific showrunner in mind right now who routinely fucks up—
Glen: Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes. We all know who you're talking about.
Drew: Yes. Seth MacFarlane easily could have been that, but he didn't do that. He actually let the show get taken over by the two co-creators who are Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman who'd both worked on Family Guy before and who both previously wrote on Homeboys in Outer Space, which starred Kevin Michael Richardson, and he voices the principal on American Dad! and we talked about in the Herman's Head episode. I'm pretty sure Homeboys in Outer Space led to American Dad!, which put him in the position to get hired by The Simpsons, which is a weird chain of events. But yay, Kevin Michael Richardson. So from a creative standpoint, Seth MacFarlane mostly stepped back and focused his attention on his baby, which is Family Guy, and he let the other two guys do their own thing, and that is how the show turned into something that was different from Family Guy. It's a weird position to think about because it is his project and he is the boss of bosses, but he's essentially taking orders from his underlings because they're running the show and he voices Stan and Roger. So he's part of the show, but he's not really creatively part of it. There's an interview where he says initially, "I didn't really understand what they were doing," but once we get to seasons four and five where the show really found its speed he was like, "I love what they did with it. It turned into this very weird show that I would never have predicted would have grown out of the initial pitch, which was a show about a conservative CIA agent and his liberal daughter." Which it is still that, but it's much bigger than that now.
Glen: Do you agree that there's—I want to say there's some roots of Rick and Morty in American Dad!.
Drew: I was thinking about this. I mean, yes, because there's a lot more sci-fi than Family Guy ever did, and there's an entire season—multiple seasons, multiple years—where Jeff is traveling through space on a spaceship and his copilot is the ghost of Sinbad (the comedian, who's not dead, by the way), and that is much more Rick and Morty. But in watching Solar Opposites recently, I got an American Dad! feel from that show, but that just might be because it's the second in a franchise, essentially.
Glen: I guess I'm thinking of the episode where Roger discovers his second life that he's been living and the way that they are able to spin an elaborate tale in a 22-minute episode that is part of the show but is also very contained.
Drew: Or the underplot of the shrunken humans in Solar Opposites. I would relate that to the weird recurring mini-movie about Roger's poop being gold, which follows an advancing plot but that's spread out by several episodes at a time. Yeah. They're doing very interesting things with narrative. You can't say they're not doing that. Another weird TV connection for American Dad! is that it's All in the Family. I never thought about that before, but Stan is an Archie Bunker, Hayley is a Gloria, and Francine's kind of a dingbat, and then Hayley's boyfriend Jeff is kind of a meathead. Also, Hayley's boyfriend is Jeff Fischer, voiced by a guy named Jeff Fischer. He's friends with a different boss I had.
Glen: You've had a lot of bosses.
Drew: I've worked at a lot of jobs. He's a wine writer, and that Jeff Fischer owns a winery in Santa Barbara. He's not really putting on a voice—that's his normal talking voice—and they designed the character to look like him, so this guy is just wandering through life and occasionally meeting someone who happens to be a big fan of American Dad! being like, "This is going to sound weird, but you sound and look exactly like a cartoon character."
Glen: And share a name with.
Drew: [laughter] He's like, "Yeah. They based it on me."
Glen: He should just say, "Yeah. I was cursed and for a little bit I was living inside a TV."
Drew: I mean, that sounds great. We kind of talked about it, but another huge change that the show had was realizing that they can let Roger out of the house rather than keeping him inside like ALF, and this gives us Genevieve Vavance—"News Glance with Genevieve Vavance," who is a beautiful comedic creation. She's like a more-evil Nancy Grace. It's a great episode. The last point is that the scope of a single episode of this show might be bigger than anything Family Guy would ever do, for the most part. Even when they do that, it still seems more grounded in at least a single-episode reality because number one they don't use cut-away gags almost ever, and that's something that Family Guy became very strongly identified with. I kind of don't know how to explain how a show that could have such a wild scope could be more grounded than Family Guy, but I guess on Family Guy literally anything can happen at any point, but once the episodes get going on this show, you have some idea that—
Glen: This is the world we're playing in.
Drew: Yeah. They're not going to break their reality, I guess. Right?
Glen: Yeah. They set rules and they play by them.
Drew: Yes. Have you ever seen the episode where it's Stan dealing with issues with his dad but it is done as a community play?
Glen: Yes.
Drew: Yeah. It's—
Glen: Beautiful.
Drew: It is. It's really good. I don't know who came up with that idea, but I'm glad they got it. I feel like I could spend all day talking about American Dad! and why—
Glen: Well, you shouldn't.
Drew: No, no. I feel like I could, and I still wouldn't get someone who is not into it to budge and watch an episode of it because people have such strong feelings about Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy. This episode was directed by Tim Parsons. It's the first episode of the show he directed. He'd done SpongeBob and Powerpuff Girls, but essentially now he just directs American Dad!. This episode was written by Erik Durbin, who has also written for Last Man on Earth and Don't Trust that B---- in Apartment 23. That was a show created by Nahnatchka Khan, a lesbian writer who also created Fresh Off the Boat. We talked about Fresh Off the Boat in Season 1. Nahnatchka Kahn is one of the credited writers on "Lincoln Lover," which is probably the episode most people wanted us to do.
Glen: Sorry.
Drew: We can do it at some point. It's about Stan sneaking into the Log Cabin Republicans, basically, and almost having sex with Terry, but to me it feels like a Family Guy episode. It did not feel like—this episode we're talking about feels like an American Dad! episode where it had differentiated itself enough that it became its own thing. Maybe it's just because "Lincoln Lover" ends in a big musical number that is very reminiscent of one that would have been on Family Guy. I don't think it's as good. That one won a GLAAD Award, though. This one did not. I think this one is maybe not GLAAD Award worthy, but there's some good stuff in it. Okay, that's the background. Now we're in the actual episode. Every episode starts out with Stan singing in his tighty-whities.
Glen: It's very erotic.
Drew: It is very erotic. I wrote, "He has a good body for a cartoon character," and then I corrected it to say, "He has a good body for a Republican cartoon character, especially." But there's not really another TV show that has its main character singing in his underwear right off the bat.
Glen: Yeah, but I'd counter and say that there are a lot of attractive cartoon characters.
Drew: See, I don't. I think as far as leads on an animated sitcom, Stan and Francine are by far the most attractive.
Glen: Yeah, I guess, if you're narrowing it down to animated family sitcoms.
Drew: Right, and it's weird because they're done in the Seth MacFarlane style, but these characters aren't ghouls. Everyone on Family Guy is hideous—everyone on Family Guy is hideous, and somehow they manage to make it work. The only other attractive one I can think of is on The Cleveland Show, which I have watched. Jason Sudeikis voices Cleveland's work buddy who's hot in a Matthew McConaughey sort of way, and he ends up being bi and marries a man.
Glen: That's nice.
Drew: Yeah, it is nice. Not a terrible episode.
Glen: Well, maybe we'll do it.
Drew: At this rate, with our Season 3 that is well over 30 episodes long, we might well do that.
Glen: Oops. Well, listen Drew. The people need us.
Drew: Stan has an ex-jock body. We don't see Roger in one of his personas because—the new opening has Roger in one of his personas popping up in the car every time. He doesn't have those alternate personas yet. All right. So Scene 1, Stan accidentally shoots a bald eagle out of the air while saluting his American flag by firing a gun into the air, which is the most representative sentence I could say about Stan but also kind of Republicans.
Glen: Yeah. It's also a great reach-around because in his efforts to be more American he ends up being less.
Drew: Agree. That's a good point. I didn't even think about that.
Glen: That's really the only reason I'm here.
Drew: To point out things that—I mean, that is, kind of. Otherwise it would just be me talking to Thurman otherwise, and I don't know if people would want to listen to that. So while the family is saluting the flag, they see their neighbor gays Greg and Terry across the street.
Stan: Hey, it's our favorite gay neighbors. What are you guys doing today? Shopping? Brunching? Parading? Or taking the day off and just being gay?
Hayley: Dad! What are you doing?!
Stan: Just reminding Greg and Terry I'm cool with the man-on-man crowd. You two probably want to gossip. Dish, you queenie bitches!
Terry: Actually, we do have some big news. We've decided to have a baby.
Francine: Congratulations! Are you adopting?
Greg: No, we're having our own. Terry thinks we can handle this sort of seismic life change, so here goes nothing—[laughs with increasing unease].
Terry: Take my hand.
Greg: [continues laughing uneasily until he takes Terry's hand and sighs in relief]
Drew: There is an episode when they move in and Stan is suspicious of them, and it's kind of homophobia but also kind of he doesn't trust them because they're liberal media, and that is the episode where he gets over his initial "I don't like gay people." He makes a show of how much he likes the gay people now.
Glen: Yeah, because he knows what they like, which is shopping, brunching, parading.
Drew: I mean, he's not wrong.
Glen: He's not wrong. How do you feel about Greg and Terry as gay representation on animated TV?
Drew: They are also drawn to be very attractive, and I like to see dumpier, older gay couples on TV. But I'm not—
Glen: They're not dumpy.
Drew: No, no. I like when gay couples are not always hot because that's important for people to see. I like that they had a very fractured relationship and, like Stan and Francine, there's a lot of weird power dynamics going on there, and they are fucked up as a couple. I like that they don't make Greg and Terry perfect. I think it comes up more than once where Terry is interested in not always being the bottom, and Greg will not even consider switching roles, and Terry just has to put up with the fact that he's not going to get this. I like that their power dynamic is as fucked-up as Stan and Francine's, at least. What do you think?
Glen: I think if you'd asked me a number of years ago I may have been uncomfortable with some of the embrace of gay stereotypes, but now it's like, I know this gay couple. These people exist. And some of the things they may push too far into stereotype and camp—like there's a moment later in this episode which I enjoyed but that might be too much.
Drew: I think I know what you're talking about. I didn't like it. But yeah. Most of the stereotype stuff doesn't really bother me anymore because—yeah. I know people who would get a French Bulldog and name him Heath Ledger. Was he dead at this point?
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. That's even weirder. Greg is voiced by Seth MacFarlane. Terry is voiced by Matt Barker, the co-creator of the show. Matt Barker actually left the show in Season 11. Terry left Greg, and Greg is now a single dad. It happens offscreen, and the reason that's given is that Terry left Greg to go follow 311—the band. That's it. I really like Stan's line about two men having a baby.
Stan: Guys, guys. A baby's not like a fire. You can't just rub two sticks together and whoosh.
Drew: [laughter] It's a good line. Stan thinks that in vitro fertilization is science fiction, and Francine's like—
Terry: We're doing in vitro fertilization.
Stan: In vitro? What's that?
Terry: Well, we've got an egg donor. They'll combine her eggs with our sperm and then implant those embryos in a surrogate where, god willing, one of them will grow to term.
Stan: I thought I saw every episode of Star Trek. Wait—is this Deep Space Nine? Because I won't watch that. It's garbage, and I'll tell you why. One—
Francine: Stan, this isn't science fiction. It's real fiction. And I think it's fantastic.
Glen: [laughter] I also like that in the reference to science fiction Stan talks about Star Trek, and of course he hates Deep Space Nine, which had a female captain.
Drew: Oh, that would make sense. I didn't even think about that. That's probably why he hates Deep Space Nine.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Is that the only one he doesn't like?
Glen: Yeah. It's great, but it's one that that type of Star Trek fan wouldn't like because it has a female captain.
Drew: Francine is voiced by Wendy Schaal, and I think her performance is underrated. She has, I will say, a beautiful comedic lilt to her voice that I enjoy very much, and I feel like she should get more recognition along the lines of your Kathy Najimys and your Julie Kavners. Wendy looks like Francine in real life. I'm fairly certain they might have designed the character to look like her. She is the daughter of Richard Schaal, who we may talk about in the not-too-distant future because he was a regular on Phyllis. He also played Chuckles the Clown on the Mary Tyler Moore show in that famous episode where Chuckles dies and that's the end of that character. That man was also married to Valerie Harper from 1964 to 1978. So Wendy Schaal was Valerie Harper's stepdaughter for that period of time. He also plays Jim Carrey's dad in Once Bitten.
Glen: [gasps!]
Drew: I know. I knew one of those would get you!
Glen: Of course it was Once Bitten.
Drew: Wendy Schaal plays Bruce Dern's wife in The 'Burbs, and then she's also in Batteries Not Included, but she's not the main female role. It's one of the smaller roles.
Glen: I was actually just talking about Batteries Not Included to a friend who had also just watched the movie—The Vastness of Night—How Vast is the Night—what's that movie called?
Drew: The Vast of Night.
Glen: The Vast of Night. I was just comparing The Vast of Night to Batteries Not Included.
Drew: I haven't seen Batteries Not Included since I watched it on Beta back in the day.
Glen: They are not really actually similar at all.
Drew: Wendy Schaal, in addition to those two movies, was also on a little sitcom called It's a Living, which in case you don't know is a show about waitresses working at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
Glen: Which Drew finds a reason to mention every episode.
Drew: Three episodes in a row—because I'm hoping someone who's listening will be like, "Yeah, the did a gay episode," and they'll tell me about it, but no one's reached out yet.
Glen: Please, someone save us from this nightmare.
Drew: The first season is on Prime now.
Glen: Well, there you go.
Drew: And in remarkable quality. I don't think Wendy Schaal's on it at that point, though. Someone tried to tell me that Ann Jillian's hair is gay enough on its own that we could do an episode. I like that joke, but I don't think we can do it.
Glen: Scene 2.
Drew: Inside the house, Stan is furious that the neighbor gays would have a kid, and this is where his homophilia hits its limits because he was fine with them being gays that lived across the street but the idea that they're going to try and make a child is offensive to him.
Glen: Yeah. He says, "I let them be gay, and this is how they repay me?" It's also a running joke on the show, Stan's attraction for men and attraction to the idea of two men having sex.
Drew: He almost has sex with Terry. It happens before this, and it's the episode where he thinks that being gay is a choice, and when he realizes that he can't get it up and won't go through choosing to be gay to have sex with Terry, he realizes "Oh, being gay is not a choice."
Glen: Yeah. It's one of those things where you kind of believe it, and not like that stereotype of all homophobes are gay but just like someone who loves men that much and the idea of being a man that of course it would kind of blend with attraction to men. It's like 300.
Drew: Wait, what's 300?
Glen: That movie.
Drew: The Spartan movie.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Okay. That was a reference I have not thought about in a long time. I was just thinking anybody the number 300, and I was like, "There's nothing gay about that number. What's wrong with you?"
Glen: No, three is a—never mind.
Drew: Three kind of looks like a butt, but so does eight. I really like the joke about having sex with the couch [laughs].
Francine: Well, I admire Greg and Terry. They're taking their lives to the next level.
Stan: Francine, it's unnatural. I mean, why don't I just start a family with the couch?! Hey, kids. How was school? Brush your teeth. Stay off drugs. Hello, wife. Miss me? Huh? I missed you. [kissy sexy sounds] Oh-ho man, the things I'm going to do to you. Here. Lie on your stomach. I'll prop you up with the kids.
Francine: Stan!
Stan: See how weird it gets Francine?!
Drew: [laughs] It's just a very strange, strange joke.
Glen: I mean, it's a well-acted, well-drawn joke.
Drew: And there's a callback to it later when he tries to have sex with the couch again. I think he really just wants to have sex with the couch. He also says that raising children in an abnormal environment will result in horses eating each other.
Glen: Which also comes back later.
Drew: We can just deal with the B-plot right now. The B-plot is about Steve and Roger doing a prank on Klaus and then being scared that Klaus is going to get back at them. Do you have—
Glen: Yes! So for the rest of the episode, pretty much, they just live in the attic—for months—because they are scared of Klaus's revenge. It's sort of what Stan is doing. He's so terrified of someone else's life and how it'll affect him that he ruins his own life.
Drew: I didn't think about that. Okay. That works.
Glen: Yeah. So we don't have to talk about it anymore.
Drew: We do have to talk about some of the voice actors very quickly. There are some things you'll find very interesting.
Glen: Oh, good.
Drew: All right. So Steve is Stan and Francine's son. He's a nerd. He's voiced by Scott Grimes, who is the male lead of the first two Critters movies.
Glen: I like that. I also just sent someone a picture of a critter yesterday.
Drew: Why?
Glen: Don't worry about it.
Drew: [laughs] Is that your version of sexting?
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: He played the son of Dobie Gillis and Zelda Gilroy in the TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis. He played the son on that weird Elliot Gould/Dee Wallace sitcom that was initially called Together We Stand, and then they killed Elliot Gould off and called it Nothing is Easy [laughter], which is so dark. Dee Wallace, also in Critters. They must have been friends. I like that. He was also on Party of Five in a major recurring role, and he was opening credits on the final season of ER, and he also had a recurring role on Who's the Boss? playing Samantha's boyfriend—Chad. He's also currently on The Orville, which is Seth MacFarlane's live-action show, which I have never seen, and he is married to Adrianne Palicki, who is also on that show. She was on Friday Night Lights and stuff, but I know her as being—
Glen: Wonder Woman?
Drew: —that awful Wonder Woman pilot that David E. Kelley made. Roger's voiced by Seth MacFarlane. He's played simultaneously without gender and sexuality but also very, very, very, very, very gay. He's also canonically the survivor of the Roswell crash.
Glen: Oh, that's right.
Drew: Klaus is a goldfish who has the mind of an East-German ski jumper whose brain was switched out of his human body so that East Germany would lose the 1986 Winter Olympics. Initially, he's in love with Francine. They abandon it because it's too much like the Brian-Lois dynamic on Family Guy. Klaus is kind of the Meg Griffin of the show because everyone agrees that he just sucks. No one cares what happens to him. And I feel like as secret-weapony as Roger is, I wouldn't know what the fuck to do with Klaus if I wanted to.
Glen: Yeah. I feel like when the show started, Klaus was going to have Stewie Griffin vibes where he wants to be evil and take over the world—which is what I thought the character was until I watched the show, and then I was like, no. He just happens to have that accent, but he's not a mad scientist at all.
Drew: Right. He's just German.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. He is voiced by Dee Bradley Baker, who has voiced literally every show you've watched in the last two decades: Avatar: The Last Airbender; Spongebob; Codename: Kids Next Door; Gravity Falls; Steven Universe; Phineas and Ferb; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Star Wars Rebels; Ben 10; and Legend of Korra. Now, we don't have to talk about them again, I don't think. Scene 3, there's a joke about putting clothes on a dog.
Francine: I found some of Steve and Hayley's baby clothes in the basement. I'm going to bring them over to Greg and Terry's.
Stan: Good thinking, Francine! They can put them on their dog and forget about this whole baby thing. At the end of the day, all they want to do is dress something up.
Drew: Which is not untrue. I put a bandana on Thurman for the first time just this past week. So Francine decides that she's going to deliver all the clothes in person to Greg and Terry because she supports them, and Greg is shooting down all the ideas for a surrogate because he does not want a child—he's nervous about having a child, so he's finding something wrong with all of them—and Francine comes to the realization that she should be the surrogate by a line that I find very funny, which is—
Francine: I just wanted you guys to know I think it's great what you're doing—and I'm here for you two. So I brought you some of Steve and Hayley's old baby clothes.
Terry: Ah, thanks, Francine. But at this rate, we're not going to be having a baby. Greg keeps shooting down all our surrogates. We're down to two candidates.
Greg: Wait—yellow teeth. She's a smoker. She's out.
Terry: Okay, so down to one.
Greg: Oh no, Terry, look—this girl lists her favorite movie as Erin Brockovich. Is that the kind of message you want our baby to absorb in utero—show your boobs to get clean drinking water?
Terry: You know what, I'm exhausted. You exhaust me.
Greg: You can't blame him for being picky, Terry. You're putting a lot of trust in a complete stranger.
Terry: What are we going to do?
Francine: I'll do it.
Terry: What?
Francine: I'll carry your baby.
Greg: [completely panicked] Really?!
Francine: It makes perfect sense. I live right across the street, and both pregnancies were a breeze for me. Doctor says I have a big, spongy cervix. Oh [giggles], listen to me bragging about my vagina. It's last week's PTA meeting all over again.
Drew: [laughs]
Glen: I also love that line, and that's where I came to my realization that Francine could have been a Karen. Instead, she has her own—you wouldn't think that this character would be dynamic, and they find ways to make her that.
Drew: She has very little self-awareness, but she's very nice. Yeah. I struggle to think of another character quite like her on another TV show—[begins laughing again]. "Big spongy cervix." And they accept, and she is now going to be the surrogate for Greg and Terry's child. So the next scene is a scene you know very well, Glen. Tell us about this scene.
Glen: So this is the scene where Francine goes to break the news to Stan that she's going to be the surrogate, and when she tells him he reacts very poorly. He breaks the bottle of beer that she had brought him to soften the news, and she's backed up against the wall, screaming. And then he leaves and comes back with a chainsaw, and she's backed up against the wall screaming. He leaves and comes back with a jaguar, I believe?
Drew: Some sort of cat.
Glen: Yeah, some sort of jungle cat, and she's backed against the wall screaming. Then he leaves, and he comes back, and he's holding the jaguar who's holding the chainsaw, and it ends up all being Francine envisioning how poorly it can go, so she doesn't tell Stan. This is the series of visual gags that ran as a promo for American Dad! on Adult Swim that got me to watch the show because I just found that escalation so perfect that I just laughed and laughed and laughed, and it's stuck with me all these years.
Drew: It says a lot about what kind of mindset Francine has that that's how she envisioned it. When it was a promo, did the promo make it clear that it was her imagination and not—
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. So that's another weird thing. Like, if you don't know that it is her worst-case scenario of how this news would be delivered, it's a scene of kind of horrific domestic violence.
[chainsaw vrooms]
Francine: [screams hysterically]
Jaguar: Rowr!
Francine: [screams hysterically]
Drew: It's interesting that they picked that for the promo. She does not end up telling Stan, and she screams—
Stan: Francine, what the hell? You have something you want to tell me?
Francine: Uh—you need me alive because I'm the only one who remembers where you took off your shoes!
Drew: Which is also the only reason you're alive.
Glen: You do have a lot of shoes, and you do leave them in a lot of places.
Drew: Glen is really good at finding things that aren't his. It's really strange that he often knows where my keys or wallet or remotes are. It's witch powers.
Glen: Yeah. If cops weren't awful, I probably would have made a pretty good cop because I know—I just know. I can get in people's heads. It's why I'm a good writer, and also why I'd be a good detective.
Drew: You should start a detective business specifically for finding lost articles.
Glen: Sure.
Drew: It'd be very handy. We have to take a break.
Glen: To advertise my detective agency.
Drew: We can make that ad if you want.
["Good Morning USA" plays on super-slow mode]
[Drew and Glen promote their Patreon]
Drew: This is Drew and Detective Glen, back from commercial. Francine, visibly very pregnant, is in the kitchen—so is Stan—and Greg and Terry and have just made them dinner. Francine offers to clear the table, and Greg and Terry won't let her because she's pregnant. Stan's reaction is—
Stan: No, no. Let her. She needs to get some exercise. Look how fat she is. My god, you've let yourself go! You made your point Francine. I love you for who you are. Aha-ha-ha-ha—geez. I'm going to go look at thin women online.
Glen: I like in this scene that Stan just assumes that Greg and Terry have gotten over that whole baby business.
Stan: And how good do you feel sticking to the appropriate gay activities instead of that baby nonsense? And look! You got to wear an apron. That's almost a dress!
Glen: Stan does say some [stifles a laugh]—homophobic things in this episode.
Drew: Mm-hmm.
Glen: But you're right in that he's on a journey, and you see that he's trying to say the right thing—but they are the wrong thing. But because it's coming from a place of growth, it's forgivable.
Drew: I mean, that's not a completely inapplicable notion to discuss happening right now. So there's the homophobia where you're yelling "faggot" to some guy on the street and throwing a bottle at him, and then there's the homophobia where you haven't undone the circuitry that told you that all gay men secretly want to be a woman and they only like womanly things, and you need to undo that so you stop making shitty comments like that. Yeah. That's the same thing with most people in this country and race. Yeah. The baby kicks. Greg is terrified to touch the belly. I relate to this because I find the notion of feeling a human kick from within another human to be uncanny, and when someone's like, "Do you want to feel it?" I'm like, "I don't. I don't want to feel that." And then Greg runs away because he's worried that he's going to be like Bing Crosby.
Glen: There's also a joke in this scene that one listener and friend of ours will enjoy. Francine, in listing things she can't believe, trying to deflect, says—
Greg: I can't believe you still haven't told him you're pregnant!
Terry: I can't believe Stan hasn't noticed.
Francine: I can't believe a lot of things—that there's life on Mars, that someone's married to Larry King!
Drew: Multiple people married Larry King, also—which is weird.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: I looked up Bing Crosby. He was a bad parent.
Glen: Oh, yes.
Drew: He was a real dick.
Glen: Famously bad.
Drew: Do you know that Denise Crosby from Star Trek: The Next Generation is his daughter?
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: I do not think I realized that. I guess I don't assume that everyone with the last name "Crosby" is related to Bing, but maybe they are. He had a lot of kids. Also, another one of his sons is one of the camp counselors in the first Friday the 13th. He gets nailed to a door. The next scene we have with this whole pregnancy thing is Stan gets a call from the doctor.
Stan: Hello? Test results? But my wife's far too fat to be pregnant.
Drew: So he finally knows what's going on, and he goes over to have it out with Greg and Terry, and I hate this scene so much. I think it's so dumb. It's not funny. It takes way too long.
Glen: Well, first he goes and confronts Francine.
Stan: [noticeably irritated] Your doctor called. He said the baby you're carrying for two gay men is perfectly fine and you should be very excited!
Drew: [laughs] Okay, that's pretty good.
Glen: Yes. Then he confronts Greg and Terry, and I guess we both had a problem with this scene.
Drew: I just don't like musicals, and a lot of the people who make animated shows seem to love musicals. I just do not share that love, and I don't think there's anything funny about this.
Glen: The thing we're commenting on is that when Stan tries to fight Greg and Terry, they put on the score to Westside Story and fight him with choreography.
Drew: Yeah. It's not funny.
Glen: And then three other gay men show up to join the fight.
Drew: It feels like a Family Guy gag.
Glen: Yeah. What is funny about this joke is that when Stan and Francine go outside to fight about it, the fight is still happening without Stan. There's dancing in the window.
Drew: That is the one saving grace of this gag. I will say, for a straight man, Seth MacFarlane really seems to love musicals.
Glen: Yeah. Well, he has a nice singing voice.
Drew: He does.
Glen: I can see why people into animation love musicals—because both have to be exaggerated and over the top.
Drew: I guess it makes sense. The South Park guys love musicals, and the Simpsons guys really love musicals, and most of what I know about musicals I learned through The Simpsons. Bob's Burgers sings all the fucking time. I just don't love it.
Glen: I would love to read a book about musicals and animation.
Drew: I mean—this is not something I say. This is something Rachel Bloom says. She says that "the musical" is a uniquely American creation, and it is—when you consider that it's not an opera, but the style of musical we have is something that started here—and okay. I guess she would know about that. The animated sitcom is also a uniquely American creation.
Glen: Even though they're largely animated overseas.
Drew: Yeah. There's probably something about why these things evolved as a way of entertaining and heightening a world. I don't know. So back at the house, Stan gets a talking-to from Hayley, and it is remarkable—considering that the origin of this show was the relationship between a conservative father and his liberal daughter—that this is the first time Hayley's really done anything the entire episode.
Glen: Yes. She uses anti-abortion logic against Stan to make him become a supportive husband.
Stan: Francine, you are single-handedly bringing on the downfall of society.
Francine: It's my body, it's my decision.
Hayley: You know, Dad, you accused Greg and Terry of creating a bad environment for this child, but you're the one who's stressing Mom out, and that's not good for the baby.
Stan: Yeah, but—
Hayley: Do you want to be responsible for hurting an unborn life? Do you?!
Stan: No.
Hayley: Stop thinking of yourself, and start thinking about what's best for the baby.
Drew: And it works.
Glen: Oh yeah, it does—we think it works.
Drew: Hayley is interesting because she's the least funny of the main four family members and—you haven't watched Community, but she's kind of a Britta, where she's the one who speaks up for a liberal cause. I don't know why they seem to have a hard time making her as funny as Steve, Stan, or Francine. She is voiced by Rachel MacFarlane, who is Seth's sister, and she's really good.
Glen: I think it's harder to make her funny because she has to so often be a wet blanket, and it's hard to make a wet blanket funny. She does get storylines that I genuinely enjoy. I think it is the end of Season 2 where she's programmed to be a secret agent and Stan activates her to marry an obviously gay man.
Drew: Oh. I don't remember that part of that episode.
Glen: Mm-hmm.
Drew: Is it gay enough?
Glen: Not really. It's funny, but in a kind-of-mean way.
Drew: So Britta is also a wet blanket. Diane is often a wet blanket on Cheers, but they make her funny. I think you just need to have the right sort of writing where she's not a scold. You can't make her a scold.
Glen: Yeah. Diane doesn't view herself as correcting people; she views herself as enlightening them, and it's different. She thinks that by celebrating the things she loves like art and literature that she's showing people a light, and it's just a different thing when you think you're correcting someone. She doesn't view the patrons of Cheers as wrong; she just doesn't think they've been shown the right answer.
Drew: And Hayley thinks her dad is 100 percent wrong about everything.
Glen: Yes. I guess we could turn that into a plug for our upcoming Shelley Longcast where we will talk about the movies of Shelley Long and the ways in which they can also relate back to her character of Diane Chambers on Cheers.
Drew: Who is one of the most important characters in TV history, says us. Coming soon to—your ears. On Patreon, though. You have to give us money.
Glen: Yes.
Drew: So Hayley puts him in his place.
Stan: Honey, I'm sorry. Whether I like it or not, you're pregnant, and I have to start thinking about the baby's well-being. So from now on, we're in this together.
Francine: Stan, I'm using the bathroom.
Stan: Then I, too, will use the bathroom [unzips].
Francine: Oh, Stan.
Glen: I don't know. I think that'd be pretty hot.
Drew: I don't want to be walked in on by anyone when I use the bathroom. It's not fun. We have a montage of Stan being supportive and Greg still being freaked out, and it ends with Stan and Francine and Greg and Terry assembling nursery room furniture, and Francine's water breaks, and Greg freaks out again.
Greg: Oh, no! No, no! I'm not ready. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. No. No. No. No. No!
Terry: Greg, get in the car.
Greg: No, no, no, no, no!
Terry: Greg! [Terry exits the car] Greg!
Greg: [screams] Nooo! [cacophonous sounds]
Terry: Remember in Ibiza when you thought you couldn't wade through the foam on the dance floor?
Greg: Mm-hmm.
Terry: Well, you did that, and you can do this!
Drew: Cut to the hospital. Fran delivers. Greg is nervous. It's actually very sweet how holding the baby's hand instantly gets him over his nervousness about being a parent.
Stan and Terry: It's a girl!
Baby: [cries]
Terry: She's beautiful. Oh, Greg. Here.
Greg: No, no. No, no, no. No, no. No, no, no—I am in love with this baby!
Drew: And they want to thank Stan, and Stan is no longer there. He has taken the baby.
Glen: Yes. He slams the umbilical cord in the car door, and it is gross.
Drew: It is really gross. So Stan is on the run.
News Announcer: And now, the Channel 3 New Reporting with anchor partners Greg Corbin and Terry Bates.
Greg: A baby was reported missing today from Langley Memorial Hospital. The incident occurred at—
Terry: They took our baby!
Greg: He just took her!
Terry: Greg, get a picture of her onscreen.
Greg: I don't have a picture!
Terry: Then describe her!
Greg: She looks like an angel!
Terry: What am I doing? I was a reporter for god's sakes. I'll track her down!
Greg: Terry, you were a food critic!
Terry: Oh. You don't think I can find her? I found a decent beignet at the airport. I can find a baby.
Francine: I can't believe your father would do something like this.
Hayley: I can.
Francine: Yeah, I guess I can too. I don't know why I said that. [phone rings] Hello?
Stan: Francine, it's me.
Francine: Stan, where are you?
Stan: I'm here with Liberty.
Francine: Who?
Stan: Liberty Belle. It's the name I gave the baby I'm saving. Poor girl, I think she's slow. She's just staring at a cheeseburger.
Francine: Stan, you bring her back right now!
Stan: Sorry, Francine, but I've prayed on this, and I'm taking her to Nebraska to put her up for adoption.
Francine: What! You can't give someone else's baby away!
Stan: Nebraska begs to differ. Gay couples have no legal rights there. Once I cross that state line, Greg and Terry can kiss their custody goodbye.
Francine: You're never going to get away with this, Stan. You know I'm going to tell them. Why would you even call me?
Stan: Because something hard and black just fell off the baby's bellybutton and I thought it was beef jerky and—am I going to die, or am I stronger than ever?
Glen: The only thing I remember from the movie Like Water for Chocolate is that someone makes soup out of the placenta.
Drew: It's rich in nutrients.
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Having grown up with sheep—because my family raised sheep—the first thing that happens when new lambs are born is that the mothers lick off the placenta, and they make this very strange noise that they only make when they're eating their child's placenta. Isn't that nice?
Glen: —No.
Drew: Okay. Fine [laughs]. Stan gets spotted. He says, "Every time I let a man take a picture of me in a men's restroom it goes bad," and then he's harassed on the road by the Rainbow Truckers Brigade (which is gay truckers), and he veers off into a corn field, escapes his car, and a red-headed woman in—is it a tractor that she drives?
Glen: No. It's an ATV of some sort.
Drew: ATV. She's like, "Get on!" and she whisks him away.
Glen: Yeah. She whisks him away and takes him to shelter in her home, which is a lovely farmhouse with two lovely children, and she is waiting for Al to come back home.
Lilly: Stan, this is my daughter Mary.
Mary: Oh, a baby! I love babies. Jesus was a baby.
Stan: Yes, he was! And he was also a murder victim.
Drew: [laughs] Al's home. Stan is in the process of complimenting Lilly's home and children, and in walks Al who is a very Gloria-Steinem-looking woman in a ladies' business outfit. She's voiced by Jane Lynch, and Lilly (her wife) is voiced by Leisha Hailey (who was on The L-Word).
Glen: Yeah.
Drew: Yeah. They got actual lesbians to play lesbians, so good for them.
Stan: Lilly, you have fantastic children, a beautiful home—I can't wait to meet your husband and shake his hand.
Al: Hi, honey [kisses]. Ah, I see you found him.
Stan: Sir, I must tell you, you have a lovely family. You're a lucky man.
Al: Actually, "Al" is short for Allison. I'm a woman.
Stan: Right, right. You know, I love long hair on a man. Grown-up Jesus had long hair, but his breasts weren't as luscious as your—holy [bleep], you're a woman!
Al: Yes. Lilly is my partner. We're a lesbian couple.
Stan: Oh, my god. Does Al know?!
Lilly: Stan, we thought if we showed you how happy and healthy our family is, you'd see that there's nothing wrong with a gay couple raising children.
Drew: I did not realize that was Jane Lynch's voice, for some reason. Maybe I was thrown by the Gloria Steinem-ness of that character.
Glen: Yeah, I was also thrown by the long hair. Yeah. It turns out they wanted to show Stan their happy and healthy gay family so that he would get over his fear of letting gay parents raise children.
Drew: Which means they knew who he was, and she recognized him from the news immediately. I guess Greg and Terry are the news, so it was on the news a lot.
Glen: Yeah. They give a sort of now-depressing, naïve, liberal speech about how they didn't want to call the cops—they just wanted to reform him.
Drew: Yeah, change his heart, and as they're saying this you see Stan jumping out the window with the two—
Glen: Their children.
Drew: He steals their children as well [laughs]. He is now on the run with all three children. He's like, "Don't worry. I'm going to take you to an orphanage in Nebraska."
Glen: Have we pointed out that he names the baby "Liberty Belle," which just made me miss Glow?
Drew: That's true. He does name it "Liberty Belle," and they keep that name. That baby's name continues to be "Libby."
Glen: I also love how that baby is drawn.
Drew: Yeah, just kind of sleepy and dopey. Like, he thinks that she might be slow because she's barely touched her hamburger.
Glen: Yeah. He gives her coffee.
Drew: And a hamburger [laughter]. Lilly and Al's kids go from trying to talk Stan out of kidnapping them to fighting with each other, and he's like, "Steve, Hayley! Stop fighting!" and then he's like, "Oh. They're just like my kids."
Stan: Your nightmare is over. It might take years, but maybe someday a straight family will adopt you.
Mary: But we already have a family, and you said we were a great family!
Stan: I know. You seemed like a great family, but you can't be—there's two mothers and no father! Jason, who's going to teach you how to play football?
Jason: My football coach.
Stan: Well, okay. That could work. But Mary, who's going to carry you on their shoulders so you can see the parade?
Mary: My mom. She's six feet in heels.
Stan: Huh.
Jason: Move your stupid doll! It's in my space.
Mary: She's not stupid! You're stupid! She's my doll give her back!
[children continue fighting]
Stan: Steve, Hayley! Knock it off! I mean—wait. You fight just like my kids, just like—normal kids.
Jason: We are normal kids, you moron!
[regretful, whimsical music plays]
Stan: And none of the horses are eating each other!
Drew: And he realizes he was very stupid about this whole thing and screeches to a stop right before the Nebraska border where there's a bunch of conservatives who can't wait to get their hands on these children, and the Rainbow Truckers and Greg and Terry are there all of a sudden—and Lilly and Al are there.
Glen: Yeah. Stan's goal during all this is to take the children away from a loving home so he can bring them to an orphanage to find them a loving home.
Drew: Mm-hmm. He apologizes. Terry punches him in the face—rightfully so.
Glen: And then we cut to a scene where all four are having a picnic with the baby—except Stan is probably 50 yards away because of a restraining order.
Stan: [yelling] Coochy-coochy-cooooo! Did she smile when I said that?
Terry: No.
Stan: You ever going to drop the restraining order?
Greg: No!
Stan: She likes sugar in her coffee!
Drew: And he's like, "Did she smile?" "No." "She likes sugar in her coffee!" That's how the episode ends [laughter]. American Dad! is a delight. What did you think of this episode overall?
Glen: I mean, overall, I obviously enjoyed it. I think it's good. I think you're right to point out that what's nice—but also sometimes frustrating about Stan's relation to the gay characters is that it is evolving. There are going to be a lot of missteps along the way, but it makes sense from where he's coming from as a character.
Drew: The next episode in the gay saga of American Dad! is Terry's father (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson), who I think is a football star visits. Terry has not ever told his dad that he's gay, so Stan has to move in with Greg, and they kind of become a couple.
Glen: Maybe we'll do it.
Drew: Maybe we'll do it one day. Probably not next week.
Glen: How did you feel about the episode, Drew?
Drew: I think it's really good. I like the idea that—smart people say it all the time, like, being "woke" is not an on/off switch. It's a continual process, and it's going to be a lot of work, and people don't like to think about it being a lot of work because a lot of work is often a lot of work. But you have to continually update your operating system to whatever's current and try to make sure that you're not becoming obsolete with your beliefs.
Glen: Yeah, and that goes for ourselves and also the people we want to be better. They're not just going to be better; you have to work at it.
Drew: Which means you have to have awkward conversations with your parents sometimes—
Glen: All the time.
Drew: —when they say, "I don't understand what these protests are about," and you're like, "Okay. Well, here's what's going on," and hope that some of it sinks in. I did have to unfriend one of my parents' friends on Facebook today because—
Glen: I don't know why you're friends with your parents' friends on Facebook.
Drew: Because I've known this person since I was literally a toddler, and they are almost like family. But there was so much wrong that I can't fix this one. This is someone else's job. You're not going to be part of my stream of garbage anymore [sighs].
Glen: Yeah. For people who aren't listening to the show the week it comes out, the context for this is that we are still in quarantine, and also there are protests—so curfew as well.
Drew: Quarantine and curfew. What a time to—
Glen: I'd watch that show, "Quarantine and Curfew."
Drew: Are they cops?
Glen: Yeah, of course they're cops.
Drew: But nobody watches shows about cops anymore.
Glen: Ahh, I've trapped myself!
Drew: You walked into it [laughter]. I have one final question for you, Glen.
Glen: Okay.
Drew: Is Seth MacFarlane hot?
Glen: [silence]
Drew: Sometimes I think, "Oh, god. Yes."
Glen: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Drew: I can't explain what it is that changes about it, and it's not even really based on his creative output. Just sometimes I'm like, "Oh. He's really hot," and other times I'm like, "I don't—"
Glen: Well, there's something unreal about him. He looks like a CGI character, kind of.
Drew: I think it's because he has really nice skin—
Glen: Yes. That is exactly why it is.
Drew: Yeah. He looks like a Final Fantasy character. It's like, "You have no flaws in your skin. How is that possible?" Well, that's settled.
Glen: I think I said maybe—or sometimes.
Drew: Yeah. There is no answer—it's the Schrödinger's cat of sexiness. Glen, if people want to—I don't even have one this week. My brain stopped working right now. If people want to tweet at you, where should they tweet at you, Glen?
Glen: On Twitter you can find me @IWriteWrongs—I-W-R-I-T-E-wrongs—or on Instagram @BrosQuartz—B-R-O-S-Quartz. But this week, you should be tweeting at and about Black Lives Matter and other such causes related to this.
Drew: I am on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E—and this podcast is on Twitter, once again, @GayestEpisode. If you followed us before, you're not following us now probably, because we lost hundreds and hundreds of followers when Twitter deleted our account. Please refollow us--@GayestEpisode. You can listen to previous episodes of Gayest Episode Ever at gayestepisodeever.com. Please give us a rate-and-review on iTunes. They are helpful for the reasons you hear on every podcast ever. Once again, you can find our Patreon at patreon.com/gayestepisodeever. This is a TableCakes podcast. TableCakes is a Los Angeles based podcast network, and you can find out about all our other shows—including our new show, Happy History—by going to tablecakes.com. Our logo was designed by Rob Wilson. This show is transcribed by Sarah Neal. They have websites, too. Those are linked in the show notes. Glen, you know, one thing I actually really don't like about American Dad!?
Glen: Oh, no—what?
Drew: The title ends on an exclamation point, and it doesn't need to be there, and it makes writing the name of it kind of annoying, and it also makes it really awkward if you want to put it in the possessive—like, American Dad!, exclamation point, apostrophe S.
Glen: I'm sorry.
Drew: Don't do that. It's really awkward. Also, don't name things that are questions either for that reason. It's just typographically a nightmare. Give copy editors a break.
Glen: No.
Drew: Okay. Podcast over.
Glen: Bye forever!
["America" by Baby's Gang plays]
Katherine: A TableCakes production.