Review: American Dad “American Fung”

Posted on May 26, 2015August 12, 2019 by Tommy North

SPOILERS BELOW

China has the fastest growing economy in the world. It seems everybody wants in on the action, and the media is no different. You may remember a good chunk of the last Transformers movie taking place in China, and a completely different cut of Iron Man 3 was made for Chinese audiences that gave Chinese characters more screen time. A portion of the film was even filmed there. The point is, China is a massive audience and movie studios and television networks know that. What is the point of all this? Well, if you saw last night’s American Dad you’ll know the episode parodied the trend of Chinese influence in television and film. How was the episode overall? Read on to find out…

In “American Fung” we pick up with a Chinese billionaire named Fung Wah who announces he’s bought all rights of American Dad from Seth MacFarlane. Within the actual episode Stan forgets his anniversary with Francine and circumstances land her in a mental health facility. Meanwhile, Roger needs help from Steve and Hayley to get rid of some clothes but they’re visited by very special guest… Fung Wah!

American Fung is a very strong episode. Fung Wah who is played by Garrett Wang also played Henry Kim on Star Trek: Voyager. He brought so much fun and humor to this episode, it’s impossible to not like his character. Most of the comedy he brings to the episode stems from how amazingly the other characters in the show treat him. He owns the show now, obviously the Smith family loves Mr.Wah! Essentially his entire role in the episode is to just be idolized by Steve, Hayley, Roger, and Klaus. The other story involving Stan and Francine is a throwaway story. It’s almost there to ground the episode a bit, and make it feel like a real episode. The story is very generic. Stan forgets his anniversary. Francine gets upset. They have a conflict. There is a lot of clever ideas within the episode, and I think this is what will make it memorable. How the episode ends is the icing on the cake as there isn’t really any conclusions to any of the stories being told. Instead Fung Wah just advertises all of his various hotel resorts, chocolates, and other products.

The episode doesn’t have many flaws to it. One I could point out is the generic story between Stan and Francine, but this particular episode didn’t demand an interesting story from them. It can easily be something we’ve seen a million times. We know how those stories end, so they gave us something generic because ultimately we were never going to see the ending anyway. One drawback in the episode that stood out as an actual flaw was the very ending where they reintroduced American Dad as “American-Chinese Dad”. The dialogue wasn’t very funny, and it just seemed unnecessary at that point. It had already wrapped up strongly at that point.

Overall, fantastic episode with a sour ending. I was laughing from start to finish. This was such a creative twist for the show, and I think it was written well and the story came together perfectly. I was really worried we were getting the same Stan/Francine story again, but it was interrupted in a clever way and suddenly everything made sense. This is one of my favorite episodes of the season, definitely in my top two or three.