Homeland Insecurity

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For the Endwell debut album, see Homeland Insecurity (album).

“Homeland Insecurity”
American Dad! episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 6
Written by	Sam O'Neal & Neal Boushell
Directed by	Rodney Clouden
Production no.	1AJN06
Original airdate	June 12, 2005
Episode chronology
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List of American Dad! episodes

Newspaper Headline
"Missing Twins Found in Gingerbread House"

"Homeland Insecurity" is an episode of the TV animated series American Dad!. This episode parodies the mistreatment of Middle Easterners and South Asians in the post-9/11 era. The episode title is a parody of the United States Department of Homeland Security namesake itself.

[edit] Plot

Francine decides to throw a block party to get in touch with the neighborhood. Stan learns his new neighbors are Iranian and immediately suspects that they are terrorists. He turns his house into a detention camp and keeps them inside. When the neighbors complain, Stan puts all of them in the detention camp, too. Luckily, Francine manages to convince the neighborhood that the whole thing is just a block party with a "terrorist detention camp" theme.

Also in this episode, Roger tries to discover any hidden powers he may have. It is revealed that his hidden power is the ability to excrete gold and other precious metals after eating certain foods. A rather long tangent from the plot line, presented letterboxed, follows this for no apparent reason: two men discover the gold left by Roger, and one of the men kills the other. He hides the dead body in the back of his truck and drives away. He is stopped by a police officer, and fears he may have been discovered, but the police officer simply talks to him for a while and drives away. Then the man stops at a gas station to call his wife to let her know that they're now rich. The phone is answered by another man, and he learns that his wife is having an affair. As the man screams in anger, "To Be Continued..." flashes at the bottom of the screen, and the episode then reverts back to its normal plot. This was most likely a joke about the series of "Trapped In The Closet" songs by R. Kelly, but was possibly just a random joke. This storyline is continued in the episode Failure is not a Factory-installed Option.

[edit] Cultural references

• When Bob tells Stan he can't put him in a prison camp, Stan replies that "the United States Patriot Act says I can."
• Stan's quote "We do our little John Woo standoff" is a reference to movie director John Woo. More precisely, it is a reference to the fight scene monologues in his movies that result in neither party being harmed because one uses the time the other is talking to escape.
• After telling Hayley that terrorists "recruit like vampires or homosexuals", he tells her to "plug your butt with this clove of garlic." Garlic, believed to offer protection from vampires, in this usage "protecting" her from a stereotypically homosexual act.
• Francine strikes a cheesecake pose, cigarette in mouth, tips the camera a wink, and cocks an imaginary gun at Stan in his underwear. This is an obvious parody of the (in)famous Lynndie England photo of Iraqi prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib.
• The scene where Roger & Steve fly off the cliff on the bike with the picture of a full moon on the billboard behind them is a reference to the famous scene from the movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. It is even more obvious as Roger is wearing a sweatshirt with a hood on while riding on the front basket of the bike, exactly like E.T.

[edit] Notes

• Langley Falls Post front page headline: "Missing Twins Found in Gingerbread House" , a reference to Hansel and Gretel.
• The billboard of the moon that Steve & Roger fly in front of on the bike says, "The Moon: Our Nighttime Sun! The Lunar Awareness Council."
• Stan's apron when he's at the block party at the beginning of the episode reads, "100% American Beef."
• This episode had a viewer discretion advisory before the beginning of the episode on FOX.
• The original broadcast of this episode on FOX scored a 4.3/7 rating, bringing the total viewers for the episode to 6.88 million.