I’m firmly on team “American Dad was always good”, but about a year into the show moving to TBS the plots got a lot wilder and weirder and I think we can all agree that was a good thing. Rabbit Ears (which is in either season 14 or 16 depending on who you ask, the numbering system of AD seasons is kind of messed up and Wikipedia and varies streaming services can’t agree on what the “correct” number is) seemed to be a turning point where the show really hit its stride and started putting out consistently great episodes pretty regularly, but there’s a lot of homeruns and hidden gems even before that.
Now, the thing about American Dad is that while the continuity of the show is very loose there IS a lot of character humor and callback gags. Thus, it can be hard to recommend a perfect place to start for people who don’t want to go back to season one when the show wasn’t as good and work their way upwards through over 300 episodes because a lot of the jokes work best when you have a solid understanding of the people, the places, and the weird logic on which the stories run.
That’s why I’ve put together a few “American Dad Starter packs” with episodes that either follow a specific “arc” or theme to help new comers who want to try the show out a way to ease their way into in and see if it’s style of humor is for them.
For each pack I’ve given you the episode names, but not what number or season they’re in because like I said it tends to vary depending on where you’re watching, so you’re going to have to do some googling sorry. A trick I’ve found that usually works is to look them on Wikipedia and past about season eleven if the episode list you’re seeing doesn’t match that go back 2 or 3 seasons.
Pack one: “Roger’s Personas”
Episodes: Fellow Traveler, The One That Got Away, Jenny Fromdabloc, Shallow Vows, The Dentist’s Wife, Ricky Spanish, Persona Assistant
Description: For people who want to better understand why and how Roger the alien is like 300 different people at the same time and society as a whole just rolls with it.
Pack two: “Let’s get Spooky!”
Episodes: Rabbit Ears, Echoes, Hot Water, Enter Stanman, You Are Here, Exquisite Corpses, Salute Your Sllort, Family Time, The Three Fs, The Witches of Langley, The Pleasanting at Smith House
Description: Most American tv shows only do horror themed episodes around Halloween, but at some point the writers of American Dad realized “Wait, we can write episodes with horror elements whenever we want! Even if it’s not Halloween time!” so now we get like 3-4 spooky episodes per season and there was much rejoicing. To be clear: these are just a few of my favorite spooky episodes, there’s actually way more than this.
Pack three: “Jeff’s Space Adventures”
Episodes: Naked to the Limit One More Time, Lost in Space, The Longest Distance Relationship, Holy Shit Jeff's Back!, Bahama Mama, Roger's Baby
Description: Jeff gets sent to space, try to guess how this story arc will begin and end and then see just how wrong you are.
Pack four: “Danuta and Nerfer”
Episodes: Faking Bad, "Shark?!, Funnyish Games, One Fish Two Fish, Roger Needs Dick, Beyond the Alcove, Please Please Jeff, Cow I Met Your Moo-ther
Description: Hayley has these two friends named Danuta and Nerfer. They started out has a background character (Danuta) and a one-off gag (Nerfer) respectively, but the writers kept making jokes about them and kept bringing them back up and eventually had them move in together and buy a bunch of bats. Why? Probably because their names are hilarious. I know that’s why I like ‘em. Anyway, here’s a few episodes where they’re either mentioned or make an appearance.
Pack Five: “Christmas with the Smiths”
Episodes: The Best Christmas Story Never Told, The Most Adequate Christmas Ever, Rapture’s Delight, For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls, Season’s Beatings, Minstrel Krampus, Dreaming of a White Porsche Christmas, Gifted Me Liberty, Ninety North, Zero West, Santa Schmanta, Yule. Tide. Repeat, The Grounch
Description: The Simpsons does the best Halloween episodes, Bob’s Burgers does the best Thanks giving episodes, and American dad does the best Christmas episodes. These are my firmly held beliefs, feel free to fight me in a field if you disagree.
Pack Six: “That one episode guest staring and co-written by The Weekend”
Episode: A Starboy Is Born
Description: I couldn’t figure out what I could pair this with to make it a “pack”, but I still felt like I had a moral obligation to let people know that this exists and they should watch it.
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