Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched American Dad’s Season 20 premiere, so be warned!
The sun in the sky definitely had a smile on its face today, as American Dad hit the rare TV benchmark of debuting its 20th season, but its arrival on the 2026 TV schedule wasn’t on the same channel the animated comedy has called home for the past twelve years. “Aw Rats, A Pool Party” marked its return to Fox’s Sunday night lineup after an extended run on TBS, and what a gloriously disgusting homecoming it was. Pool parties shouldn’t inspire pure disgust, but the Smith family rises above.
Not only did the episode showcase one of the all-time grossest gags of the show’s 380+ episodes, but it also featured an excellent Star Trek callback for Patrick “Picard” Stewart, and references to Ratatouille and The Simpsons. T’was a glorious night indeed, so let’s give each of these highlights their due celebration, all while trying not to throw up in one’s own mouth.
Stan’s Dead Rat Balloon Animal Nearly Killed Me
As soon as Stan excitedly mentioned the family’s shared pubic-hair razor as a lead-in to the family’s pool party, I just knew something awful would happen. Stan doesn’t bring out that time-honored toiletry for any ol’ small-fry nonsense. It’s the pube razor, people!
I didn’t expect the pool party to get upended by a dead rat, though, or that the rat would lead to one of the most nauseatingly hilarious one-two jokes I can remember seeing. Not just on American Dad, but anywhere in life.
After Bullock & Co. arrived, and Stan was correctly called out for hiding the still dripping animal corpse behind his back after taking it out of the pool, he attempted to lie his way out of trouble by bafflingly claiming the cadaver in his hand was actually a balloon.
Not just a balloon, but one that he could then twist and turn into the shape of a rat, complete with some choice squelching noises from the foley dept.
I was already laughing too loudly as Stan started blowing air into the rat’s gross little mouth, and then the floor dropped from beneath me as he rather methodically turned his balloon animal lie into something that actually resembled the truth. By the time the corpse exploded viscera as Jeff grabbed it, I was choking on my own laughter, and had to pause the episode.
That 15-second sequence is easily one of the funniest things I’ve seen so far this year, and I imagine I’ll be using “No, it’s a…balloon!” the next time I need to lie about something.
Patrick Stewart’s Latest Nod To His Star Trek Catchphrase
Astonishingly enough, just before setting up Stan’s disgusting array of vomit-worthy shenanigans, the great Sir Patrick Stewart made a fun callback to his famed catchphrase command as Star Trek‘s Jean-Luc Picard, “Make it so.” As it went in the episode:
What a party! A taco guy? Smith, you made it so!
Bullock
I’ve no clue how Picard would feel about having a taco guy onboard the USS Enterprise, but how could he not want one?
Jeff’s Ratatatouille Joke
The dead rat in the pool wasn’t even the first mention in the episode of a character doing something strange with a rodent (or at least sharing a story about it). When Jeff showed up late for…breakfast or whatever the family meets up around the dining room table for, he first celebrates doing a chore without being told, and then explains why it took him over an hour to take the trash out, saying:
I met a rat out there. I put it on my head to see if it was Ratatouille, but all it did was make me steal a car.
Jeff
Maybe having to deal with Jeff during the car theft was enough to make that rat want to jump into the pool to end its own life. Or maybe that was just a different rat, and the Smith’s house is surrounded by them.
Roger And Rogu Make Simpsons Jokes
The less said about Roger’s Season 20 premiere narrative arc, the better, since it involves his “drain,” as he so elequently puts it at one point. The issue keeping him from the pool party story is a missing costume mustache. When Klaus asks why he can’t just use another fake ‘stache, Roger totally reveals the state where The Simpsons has been set all this time. (Or not.)
I do have another one from another persona. His name is Ned Flanders. He lives in another state that I can’t say for some reason. It’s Michigan. There, I said it.
Roger
I think I’d be slightly more shocked to learn that one of The Simpsons’ funniest characters has actually been a space alien this whole time, as opposed to learning that Springfield is located in Michigan. I guess there are ways to try and prove that both can be true. But for that, we’d need all the elements for our detective character, and it looks like Rogu slurped those up, too. But as he put it, sounding not quite like Bart Simpson in doing so:
Don’t have a cow, man.
Rogu
Gotta love that the show then took a shot at Ricky Spanish fanatics like myself by having Roger tell the whispering voice to shut up. My kingdom for another Ricky Spanish episode, though.
American Dad airs Sunday nights on Fox at 9:00 p.m. ET, and streams the next day via Hulu subscription. Will next week’s episode feature a sequence worthy of making it to the excellent American Dad’s Greatest Hits collection? I’ll never tell. (But yes.)
