Threat Levels
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| American Dad! Episode |
| "Threat Levels" | |
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| Episode no.: | 2 |
| Prod. code: | 1AJN02 |
| Airdate: | May 1, 2005 |
| Writer(s): | David Zuckerman |
| Director: | Brent Woods |
| Guest star(s): | Carmen Electra |
| Headline: | "Stuff Happens As Wave of Ambiguity Spreads" |
"Threat Levels" is the second episode produced and the official series premiere of the tv animated series American Dad!.
It features the special voice guests Kevin Michael Richardson (as Scab Bum), Busy Philipps (as Dana), Curtis Armstrong (as Snot), Daisuke Suzuki (as Toshi), Ralph Garman (as Hazmat Guy), Stephen Root (as Dick), Eddie Kaye Thomas (as Barry), Mike Henry (as Jackson/Charlie), Bradford N. Smith (various characters) and Mike Barker (as Terry Bates).
[edit] Plot
Stan accidentally brings home a liquid contaminated with a deadly virus. The CIA puts the entire family on quarantine and, since they are supposed to die within a day, they decide to spend it watching the entire first season of 24 on DVD. While they wait for a horrible death, Roger makes plans to redecorate the house once they are gone. As it turns out, however, that sample of the virus was inactive.
The virus scare causes many neighbors of the Smiths to put their houses for sale, and so Francine meets a real estate agent and wishes she too could go into the business. Stan then uses his connections to have the real state agent they had met, "Barb", shipped to Guantanamo and put Francine in her place. But Stan is ashamed when Francine makes more money (in her new real estate job) than he does, as he fears he may be emasculated by the whole situation. He tries to resolve the problem by having Francine's boss arrested and her agency shut down, but Francine goes into business on her own, working out of the house and even hiring Roger as her personal assistant.
Hayley uses one of the houses in her mother's portfolio to set up a shelter for the homeless. Steve and his friends, looking for a way to make money to buy a Gamestation, had wanted to use the place to run a Girls Gone Wild knockoff. When Hayley's shelter prevents this, they decide to use the situation and run bumfights with the homeless men at the shelter. When informed of this by Hayley, Stan sees an opportunity to start making more money than his wife; he muscles Steve and his friends out and takes over the bumfight business.
This enfuriates Steve and Hayley (for different reasons), and to break Stan, Hayley unionizes the bums, who go on strike, leaving Stan without a fight to offer to his paying custumers. He is then tricked into fighting an enormous man, described as a bum so bad that he "killed his own name". As it turns out, however, Hayley and Steve had rigged the fight, as the bum was actually an actor payed to throw the match (after having pummeled Stan a bit).
At this point, Francine apparently convinces Stan to come to terms with her making more money than he does. In actuality, Stan uses his CIA contacts to kidnap Alan Greenspan's dog and force him to raise interest rates and virtually put the real estate market (and Francine) out of business.
[edit] Cultural references
- Donald Trump demands payment when Stan says "you're fired". This is a reference to Trump's attempt to trademark that phrase, which he uses often on his show, The Apprentice.
- Steve's idea to hold bumfights may be a reference to Bumfights: Cause for Concern, a film made by some high-school students, which featured homeless people beating each other up for money.
- The GameStation is a combination of Nintendo GameCube and Sony's PlayStation, which is also used on the show Teen Titans.
- When Roger says "the boss is being a real catch you next Tuesday" while referring to Francine, the expression catch you next Tuesday is an backronym for the word "Cunt", when "you" is read as "U"
- There is a bum version of Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly board game in the "Fighting Bums Local 302" protest group.
- The montage in which Steve details his plan for he and his friends to get a GameStation is possibly adapted from the similar montage near the end of the 2001 film of Ocean's Eleven, a possibility established by the widescreen presentation of the montage and the end of the montage, which has Steve and his friends playing a GameStation, wearing tuxedos, outside of the fountain in Las Vegas that, in Ocean's Eleven, the crew gathers outside after the heist.
[edit] Notes
- The original broadcast of this episode on FOX scored a 6.3/9 rating, bringing the total viewers for the episode to 9.47 million.
- Adult Swim airdate: May 12, 2005.
- The original broadcast of this episode on Adult Swim received a total of 1,133,000 viewers among adults 18-34.
- Adult Swim cut the part where a couple get splashed with blood as Francine shows them the backyard of the house where the bum fights are held the first time the episode aired. In the third airing of this episode on Adult Swim (Sunday, May 15, 2005 @ 11:00 p.m. EST), the scene was left intact and has been left intact ever since.
- After Francine shows Stan her first paycheck, Klaus's lip sync doesn't match his words (the DVD set does have a table read/animatic version of this episode [Disc 3; Special Features section] that includes scenes and dialogue that aren't in the final version, so viewers can find out what Klaus's original lines were on this part).
| Preceded by: "Pilot" |
American Dad! Episodes | Followed by: "Stan Knows Best" |
