Roger (American Dad!)

Roger Smith,^[1] is a character from the animated television series American Dad!. He is a space alien, reminiscent of the Roswell greys, but with the body that resembles E.T., and lives with the Smith family. Roger is sarcastic, amoral, self-centered, and hedonistic. He speaks in a swish intended to resemble Paul Lynde,^[2] and has a near-obsessive childlike affinity for role-playing various personae in his day to day life. He came to live with the Smith family after saving Stan Smith's life in Area 51 four years prior to the show beginning.

Character

Roger was born on an unnamed planet in AD 410.^[3] Although Roger has shown an affinity for the cold,^[4] has remarked that snow reminds him of his home world and that he learned to ice-skate there,^[5] Roger's planet and species are never specifically named nor seen. The color of Roger's blood changes. It is most frequently purple or green but has also been yellow (like in season 2, episode 3) and red (in the episode "Stan's Food Restaurant" and others) He has on one occasion demonstrated to be capable of moving at superhuman speed (slowing down time and moving at normal speed).

It is also revealed that he records an individual's memories after fingering the various orifices. On his home planet, Roger worked as a greeter at a Wal-Mart-style department store. Roger was tricked into coming to Earth as a crash test dummy under the assumption that he was "The Decider" and that the fate of mankind was in his hands. In the course of learning his true purpose for coming to Earth, he learned he was very resistant to fire. Having survived the crash he has been on Earth since 1947, Roger has been a part of several important moments in recent American history. Roger had a hand in inventing disco music, was a member of the Miracle on Ice 1980 US Olympic men's hockey team, was Jerry Lewis's tailor in 1966 and gave him the idea for the MDA Telethon which Lewis took full credit for, fought for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, and was responsible for the death of Notorious B.I.G. in 1997 after angering an armed driver who cut the rapper off in traffic (Roger survived the shooting and stole the Notorious B.I.G.'s gold chain, which Stan assumed was a gift Roger made for him). He is also responsible for getting the captain of the oil tanker Exxon Valdez drunk, leading to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and for creating the initial design for Jar Jar Binks for George Lucas for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, as seen in flashbacks in "You Debt Your Life". He has also had several one shot jobs such as car salesman and college professor as well as showing a number of talents for things like house cleaning, cooking, bartending, wedding planning and in general, the ability to organize large scale projects; like a massive spring break blowout, very well. Additionally, he is skilled in the art of disguise; being able to pass for either a man or a woman and to adopt an accent as required.

He lived with several families before the Smiths, with varying degrees of amicity, the Smiths being the only family knowing that he is an alien. Additionally, Roger seems adept at either identity theft and/or creating new identities for himself; many of which have Social Security numbers; so he can move freely in the world. The CIA is aware of his existence and has been attempting to capture him, succeeding once (when Stan Smith met him), and once when Roger accidentally caught himself while working at the CIA. In order to make Roger palatable to the family, Stan gave him to his son Steve as a birthday present, and Roger is now accepted as part of the Smith family.

Roger describes himself in "You Debt Your Life" as a "fey pansexual alcoholic non-human" in a similar vein to comedian Andy Dick. Roger spends his time watching soap operas (Dynasty, Sex and the City, and a fictitious season of The Simple Life that showed Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie as prisoners), eating junk food and using recreational drugs, including alcohol, tobacco, marijuana,^[6] heroin,^[7][8] cocaine,^[9][10] crack cocaine,^[11] steroids^[12] oxycodone, ecstasy, cooked down Affron, U4EA (a.k.a. the "fake drug from 90210"), nitrous oxide, and methamphetamine.^[13] His excessive consumption of alcohol would, in human terms, qualify him as an alcoholic. He shows a preference for red wine. It is suggested in "The Best Christmas Story Never Told" that he is depressed over being stranded on Earth and having no place in human society, which could be a factor in his excessive alcohol and drug use. In place of organic waste he excretes golden feces with encrusted jewels that caused random people to do deplorable things.

Roger is frequently childish, showing an affinity for character role-playing, tantrums, and pranks, as well as being quite petty, spiteful, greedy, and cruel. In one instance, he convinced Steve he was adopted in retaliation for Steve having eaten the last cookie, and in another he threatened Steve's life by having him employed in a meth lab and convincing him he is at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter novels.^[9] Despite having been on Earth for over sixty years, he has a tendency to be highly naive about the way the world works. He has at one point adopted a group of foster children with the intent to use them as slave labor. When he becomes dictator of a Caribbean island,^[14] he demands extravagant and vain services from the populace, such as painting the island yellow; he also sexually abuses his male staff. It is explained in "Frannie 911" that acting in a spirit of human courteousness and general niceness is poisonous to Roger, and he needs to clear his system of unpleasantness or risk death. Roger also has a history of holding grudges as shown in "Great Space Roaster" and "Virtual In-Stanity", the former depicting his numerous attempts to the kill the Smith family for insulting him at his comedy roast and writing death threats to Merlin Olsen for seven years after Father Murphy was cancelled while the latter has him murdering five people who ripped him off with several others killed off in the process.

In the pilot episode, Roger's body creates a mucus like fluid which is regularly expelled from several otherwise invisible orifices. This trait has been largely ignored throughout the rest of the series. He also produces a mayonnaise-like substance during his reproductive cycle. This substance is apparently delicious, as evidenced in the episode "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man" when he uses it as a substitute for mayonnaise in Francine's potato salad.

Disguises

Roger was initially forbidden to leave the house or interact with the Smith family's visitors. This quickly changed however, as a disguised Roger would be regularly seen outside the Smith home after only a few episodes. He has an extensive collection of wigs and hundreds of costumes of both genders stored on a carousel in the Smith attic, along with a vast array of fictitious personas and a book to keep record of which persona various friends and relatives know him as.^[15] Roger greatly enjoys his roleplaying and allows himself to be completely absorbed by his character, even to the point of violence and abuse towards those he considers close to him, such as stabbing Steve in the chest while acting as an employee for one of his other personas. His many personas caused him to temporarily develop dissociative identity disorder (a split personality) in the episode "The One That Got Away" as "Sidney Huffman", a puritanical antithesis to Roger's usual personality. He also appears to be leading entirely separate double lives from his life with the Smith Family, as his persona of "Jeannie Gold, wedding planner" has two full-grown sons named Alex and Ronnie who refer to him as "mom", and has advertisements in Argentina as both a wedding planner and prostitute in "Shallow Vows".

The only characters outside the Smith home that have been shown to see through Roger's disguises are Steve's friend Toshi and hillbilly moonshiner Bob Todd. When Steve introduces his "uncle Roger" to his friends, Toshi replies "Ah yes, the alien in the wig" albeit in Japanese, to which Steve responds "Yeah, on my mom's side." Bob Todd makes a similar remark in English upon meeting Roger for the first time.

References