Dungeons and Wagons

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“Dungeons and Wagons”
American Dad! episode

Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 5
Written by	Michael Shipley, Jim Bernstein
Directed by	Kurt Dumas, Anthony Lioi
Production no.	2AJN08
Original airdate	November 12, 2006
Newspaper Headline	Dems Take House, Republicans Get Record Collection
Season 2 episodes
American Dad - Season 2 September 10, 2006 – May 20, 2007
Camp Refoogee The American Dad After School Special Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option Lincoln Lover Dungeons and Wagons Iced, Iced Babies Of Ice and Men Irregarding Steve The Best Christmas Story Never Bush Comes to Dinner American Dream Factory A.T. The Abusive Terrestrial Black Mystery Month An Apocalypse to Remember Four Little Words When a Stan Loves a Woman I Can't Stan You The Magnificent Steven Joint Custody

← Season 1	Season 3 →
List of American Dad! episodes

"Dungeons and Wagons" is a second season episode of the animated series American Dad!. The title is a reference to Dungeons & Dragons.

[edit] Plot

Stan and Francine always follow the same routine, going out on Fridays to the same place, and Francine feels that their relationship is in a rut. When a guy tries to race them, Stan instead writes down his license plate so he can be reported. Francine tells Stan she's looking for excitement in their marriage, so Stan gets in the driver's seat and becomes involved in drag racing to spice things up, gaining a quick title as The Suit. But Francine loses a $50,000 bet on a race, and when she can't come up with the money she is kidnapped and held hostage. Stan and Roger must try to get the money to get her back. Roger decides the quickest way to their goal is to rob convenience stores, which Stan reluctantly goes along with. However, he has a change of heart at the second store and leaves the car so he can do things "his way." He goes into a phone booth, leaving his post as getaway driver and resulting in Roger getting caught and beaten by the irate store owners.

Stan later meets Francine and the kidnappers. He hands over a suitcase and opens it to reveal phone books on top of a thin layer of money. Stan realizes he opened the suitcase upside down revealing the phone books. His plan a failure, Stan simply grabs Francine and tries to escape, with the kidnappers in hot pursuit. They escape after Roger lightens the car by removing parts of it and throwing them (and finally, when there are no more car parts to throw, his beloved Rod Stewart record collection) at the cars of the kidnappers, ("choke on my rod!") driving them off the road. After getting away, Francine and Stan decide that they'd like something more exciting than dinner at the same restaurant every Friday night but less exciting than what they'd just been through. They decide that having sex right there on the sidewalk would fit that description, and do so.

Meanwhile, Hayley breaks up with her boyfriend, Jeff, who is emotionally crushed until he joins Steve's world, of online gaming. When Hayley finds out, she tries to talk things out with Jeff, but he ignores her while playing with Steve and his friends. Feeling enraged, she tries to sabotage their fun. At Klaus's suggestion, she kills Steve's amazing character by saying his name, Agathor, backwards (pronounced 'Rothaga', despite being spelled Rohtaga), crushing Steve and his standing among his friends. In response, Jeff angrily confronts Hayley for sabotaging Steve's fun, telling her to go away from him. Realizing how much Agathor meant to Steve, Hayley finds out about an amulet that will resurrect Agathor and gets Jeff's help in killing the monster that guards it. They succeed and restore Agathor to life. Jeff decides that he would like to get back together with Hayley ("we make a great team"), but she has already found someone else while playing the game and Jeff angrily destroys his laptop in response, never to play again. Steve is happy to have Agathor alive again and goes to take revenge on his friends. But Steve's friend Barry just says Agathor's name backwards, killing Agathor once again. At that rate, Steve angrily responded: "SON OF A BITCH!!!"

[edit] Cultural References

Steve and his friends (and later, Jeff and Haley) are playing an MMORPG in the vein of Everquest or World of Warcraft.
Hayley kills the monster in the same manner that Chief Brody killed the shark in Jaws. Except for the final word, she also uses the same line he did before she fires into its mouth: "Smile, you son of a bitch."
Stan finds Francine watching 2 Fast 2 Furious and concludes that she already saw the first film, as it's the only way for her to "understand the highly cerebral storyline".
Roger mentions the ending of Batman Begins, which, as he puts it, sets up the inevitable sequel The Dark Knight when James Gordon gives Batman a card left by the Joker.
The montage with Stan winning race after race and Francine posing on his car are based on the video for Whitesnake's single "Here I Go Again", in which Tawny Kitaen poses in the same manner. The song also plays during this sequence.

[edit] Notes

The in-game scenes are drawn in a more elaborate style than the "normal" sections. A similar effect was achieved in the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, except that those in-game scenes were done in machinima.
When not online, Steve and his friends stay in character at least part of the time and engage in LARP.
The first act of this episode was shown at the 2006 Comic-Con during the Family Guy/American Dad panel.
During game play, Steve plays a human warrior named Agathor, Hayley plays a female human warrior named Morwin Nerdbane, Jeff plays a satyr character who appears to be a minstrel, Snot plays a dwarf warrior, Barry plays a plump, elderly human wizard, and Toshi plays an elf archer.