91 - The Return of the Bling
Season 5, Episode 13
Original air date: February 21, 2010
Roger’s personas have opened up so many story possibilities for the show. They must feel so unrestricted, having this multi-purpose character that can be anything or anyone, for whatever kind of story they want to tell. In this episode, one of his personas was a member of the 1980 US Olympics hockey team. And this isn’t a fabricated backstory for a character, this
actually happened (“You know how I go out of town once a year?” “No. I don’t like to think about you. It’s confusing.”). And because the team are Stan’s heroes, therefore this makes Roger one of Stan’s heroes too. We’re expected to ignore that despite Stan knowing Roger for a while now this revelation has never come about before, even though Stan has a shrine to the team in his study, but each episode does sort-of take place in its own semi-continuity so it doesn’t bother me that much.
Switching up character dynamics is always fun, as Stan flips from hating Roger to worshipping him, until Stan learns that Roger was on steroids. This leads to Stan and Steve trying to return Roger’s medal to the Olympic committee (which is apparently atop a mountain?). The significantly long final act is mainly a parody of ‘The Return of the King’, with Roger naturally assuming the role of Golem and trying to get his precious medal back before they reach the top. Steve has been dropping TLOTR references since the start of the episode so this doesn’t come out of nowhere, even if there’s no point any show doing this now, not after South Park did it to perfection back in 2002. It’s a surface level homage at best, and things take a truly strange and random turn when Roger leads them into a youth hostel, which he somehow knew was there and is for some reason on this random mountain. Yeah, this is the stupidest part of the episode and completely inconsequential. You can skip the hostel scene and the episode still makes sense, so why is it here?
The internal conflict of the episode is Stan learning to accept that his heroes are not perfect (with a little help from Steve), and it’s executed well enough, including a dream sequence where Stan talks to his other hero, Ronald Regan, but it takes a backseat to Roger’s antics (crashing planes and biting fingers, you know, the usual Roger stuff). It’s a fun episode that’s not trying to do anything too deep or have a meaningful character arc, but the third act is not as strong or as funny as the first two, merely trying to coast on their TLOTR parody, and that bizarre youth hostel stuff completely breaks the immersion.
- The B-plot is noteworthy because it’s the start of a three episode mini-arc about Hayley dating Reginald. It’s interesting because this is where AD starts to experiment with some light serialization and status quo changes, which I’ll talk more about in the coming episodes, and they’re finally trying to do something with Hayley, who has sat on the shelf for the better part of the last two seasons. The weak part though is that there are no jokes in these B-plots, unless you find Reginald riffing funny, which I don’t. He’s a street smart black guy in the body of a koala, and there’s very little else to him besides that. Honestly, he’s a little annoying.
- I’ll mention this once. Reginald is a koala. The show completely brushes past the fact that Hayley is attracted to an animal, you know, bestiality. But since Family Guy never addresses this with Brian I don’t know why I expected American Dad to. Anyway, it’s a cartoon, it’s not a big deal, I’ll never bring this up again.
- I don’t get the gag of Klaus pretending to be a school kid. I mean, I understand that Klaus is slowly going mad trapped in a fish’s body, but why is he decked out in Family Guy gear? Also, pretty sure this is the first reference AD’s ever made to its older brother. Surprised it took them until season 5.
- “I was born into an upper middle class white family in the suburbs. No one gave me a chance!”
- “You’re fat, Helen!”
- So Helen apparently kissed and/or banged a naked Roger and didn’t realize he’s an alien. At least this can be explained away as her being too drunk to notice, I guess. But then later at the hostel Roger is barely wearing a disguise and no one there clocks him as an alien.
- “You just gave me another hole for your glory to shine through. A glory hole in my face.”
7/10