Tearjerker (American Dad!)

Infobox American Dad! episode
Title =Tearjerker
Series =American Dad!


Caption =
Season =3
Episode =10
Airdate =January 13, 2008
Production =3AJN08
Writer =Jon Fener [DVD Commentary for episode "Camp Refoogee". "American Dad!", Volume 2.]
Director =Albert Calleros [DVD Commentary for episode "Camp Refoogee". "American Dad!", Volume 2.]
Guests = Don LaFontaine, Seth Green
newspaper_headline =
Episode list =List of American Dad! episodes
Season list = Infobox_American_Dad!_Season_3
Prev =Frannie 911
Next =TBA__NOTOC__"Tearjerker" is a third season episode of the animated series "American Dad!".

Plot summary

The show starts as a parody of "The Spy Who Loved Me". A British agent with a mustache jumps out of a cable car, and the woman next to him tells the henchmen to follow him. The agent kills one of them and when he is about to shoot another, Stan comes to help him. Stan blows up the henchmen and unwittingly creates an avalanche. The two jump out and open their parachutes but unfortunately the unnamed agent dies when he is crushed by Stan's falling snowmobile.

Stan imitates the gunbarrel sequence but the gun shoots him twice before he can fire, upon which the opening credits start to roll. Stan and other characters play roles in a Bond-style spoof. In it, Stan plays a 007-type agent assigned by his boss, B (Bullock) to infiltrate the set of arms dealer-suddenly-turned-movie producer Tchochkie Schmear (Klaus, in a human form). While in Tunisia, Stan discovers that Schmear has been hired by the diabolical Tearjerker (Roger), a business tycoon who has been abducting celebrities from his spa and replacing them with celebrity robots that make horrible movies and malfunction when exposed to milk. After being helped by Tearjerker's henchwoman Sexpun T'Come (Francine), Stan realizes that Tearjerker (who is out for revenge ever since he was laughed at auditioning for "Monster's Ball") plans to use his masterpiece "Oscar Gold", the best and saddest movie ever about a mentally retarded alcoholic Jewish boy and his cancer ridden puppy during the Holocaust, to cause millions of moviegoers to cry themselves to death.

After Gums' boat tour of the plan leads Stan and Sexpun right into the villain's office (an example of the poor construction), Tearjerker ties them up and forces them to watch "Oscar Gold" along with millions of people around the world. Everyone is on the verge of crying to death (with the exception of viewers in Tehran, who find it funny and will apparently laugh themselves to death), but Stan remembers that Sexpun has a ring in her pocket that was given to him by S (Steve, whose gadgets only make women's breasts grow). He urges her to put it on, which causes Sexpun's breasts to swell so large that they break the ropes, allowing her to set herself and Stan free. Discovering the real Adrien Brody and Halle Berry in Tearjerker's dungeon, where he keeps the captive celebrities, Stan records a video of them with their baby and posts it on the Internet. All the movie goers then get phone calls about the celebrity baby and go home to see them online.

His plan in ruins, Tearjerker unleashes his soldiers to kill Stan. However, as they descend on ropes from his blimp, they plummet through the floor of Tearjerker's office (another example of the poor construction); Stan then climbs up their ropes (which were supposed to retract, but instead are another example of poor construction) onto the airship. Tearjerker tries to flee in an escape pod, planning on creating a more successful and even sadder movie: six hours of a baby chimp trying to revive its dead mother. However, the shoddy construction causes the pod to fall into a volcano. In the end, Stan and Sexpun get married, though it is unknown how long their relationship will last since Sexpun realizes that Stan was, up until their honeymoon, a virgin. Meanwhile, Tearjerker's charred arm rises from the volcanic crater...only to fall back in after a few seconds.

Cast

Notes

* The episode is very much like "Family Guy"'s "Blue Harvest" episode, in which the entire episode is a parody of a movie and isn't meant to be canon to the rest of the series. A notable difference is "Blue Harvest" is framed by scenes of the Griffins in their home with the setup that Peter is telling a warped version of "Star Wars".
* Toshi, Snot, and Barry can be seen as S's (Steve) staff.
* The magazine Stan reads has the same picture as the one Roger read in Star Trek
* The poster depicts Tearjerker (Roger) wearing a monocle on his left eye, while his lair in the background has a monument modeled after his head with a monocle over its right eye. In the episode, Tearjerker wears the monocle on his right eye.
* The head of Klaus' character, Tchochkie Schmear, is made to resemble Klaus' fish body. This is the second time that Klaus is shown in a human body whose face bears to him a resemblance, the last being in "Of Ice and Men."
* Fox censored at least one airing. In the scene immediately following the "Mt. Fuji" still image, Stan asks "...why are we dressed up like this?", to which Avery responds "Because I thought we could be secret Asians." In the censored version, Avery's response is "Because I..." followed by a second or two of silence while his lips continue to move, ending with audio of Stan saying "Pun?".
* This episode was initially intended to air after the "Family Guy" episode "Peter's Daughter", but instead, it was replaced with a re-run of "It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One". This was probably because FOX had aired the two episodes after "Lois Kills Stewie" without the approval of Seth MacFarlane, who had been participating in the writers strike.
* This episode was released on Wednesday, January 9th on iTunes a whole 4 days before its premiere on Fox, on January 13th. It was later removed and then put back on after the episode aired.
* In Sydney, a crocodile can been seen leaving the movie theater.
* Tearjerker's contractor, Mike, is an unseen character whose shoddy construction and poor design of the villain's lair is a running gag. In fact, the non-retractable ropes, easily-broken floors, inoperable escape craft, poles in the middle of a hallway, and a tram-tour that ends in the villain's office all assist Stan in defeating Tearjerker. In the episode, Tearjerker says the work the contractor has done is "unacceptable", the same word Mike Holmes uses often in "Holmes on Homes".
*Bad Larry, who Stan accidentally kills in 42-Year-Old Virgin, can be seen walking through the casino.
*During the boat tour, robots of celebrities the way they appeared in American Dad and Family Guy can be seen.
*Stan's ID card incorrectly states that the CIA is part of the Department of Justice.

Cultural References

* The entire episode is a spoof of a "James Bond" film, with each character taking up a role that can be found in a typical "Bond" story.
** Stan Smith (Stan) is a parody of James Bond. Although instead of being a smart, intelligent, and skilled gambling ladiesman that is Bond, Stan is an incompetent, stupid, and poor gambler that is still a virgin and is waiting to get married.
** Sexpun T'Come (Francine) is a parody of the Bond girl of the story. Her name clearly derived from the phrase "sex pun to come," mocks the way that the names of many of Bond's love interests are sex puns. It could also be interpreted as a sex pun itself, as "cum" can be used as a slang word for semen.
** Tearjerker (Roger) parodies an amalgam of Bond villains, with a name similar to Auric Goldfinger, and an elaborate base of operations in a volcano similar to Ernst Stavro Blofeld's in "You Only Live Twice", while the focus on tears may reference Le Chiffre in the 2006 version of "Casino Royale".
** Tchochkie Schmear (Klaus) is a parody of a typical henchman used by Bond villains.
** B (Bullock) is a parody of M, Bond's boss.
** S (Steve) is a parody of Q, Bond's Quartermaster.
** Miss Peacenickel (Hayley) is a parody of Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary.
** Mani and Pedi (Greg and Terry) are a parody of Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, the homosexual hit men in "Diamonds Are Forever". Their names are plays on "manicure" and "pedicure". The villain attempting to flee in an escape pod, only to seemingly be killed, is also a reference to "Diamonds Are Forever".
** The Professor (Chuck White) is a parody of the scientist who usually is killed by the main villain for a slip up or for incompetence.
**The end conflict with a blimp is similar to "A View to a Kill" while the end wedding is similar to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".
**Stan's pose in the poster is similar to the pose Bond is often shown in for films, such as "From Russia with Love", "Diamonds Are Forever" or "Live and Let Die".
**The jetpack at the end is a reference to "Thunderball".
**The episode is named after the word tearjerker, which is also the name of Roger's character, the main antagonist. The word refers to a sad movie, which Roger is attempting to create. It is a parody of the movie "Goldfinger" in which the movie title was named after the main villain.
**The opening is an homage to the James Bond gun barrel sequence, with Stan Smith appearing in the gun barrel complete with Stan pulling his gun to shoot (before the gun shoots and wounds him several times, leading him to exclaim "Wait, you're a "gun"? I thought you were an eyeball or something!.. Douche!") and the opening showing all the characters in silhouette and the use of tears in the shape of women.
**Stan Smith and Bullock appear in a scene in which they are both dressed as Geisha and are meeting in Japan. The scene uses music reminiscent to the score from the fifth Bond film, "You Only Live Twice", which was set in Japan.
**The henchmen were following Smith in the snow chase from "The Spy Who Loved Me".
* Tearjerker's appalling and weepy opus about a retarded Jewish boy living in an attic during WWII not only recalls "The Diary of Anne Frank", but may be an oblique reference to the infamous never-released surreal weeper "The Day the Clown Cried", starring Jerry Lewis as a clown who entertains Jewish children in a Nazi death camp.
* Greg & Terry's outfits are an homage to the Beatles in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
* The song that Mani and Pedi dance to is "The Tears of a Clown" by The Beat. The song was first recorded by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.
* "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is spoofed, with a German Shepard playing the role of Indiana Jones and Matthew McConaughey playing the role of Karen Allen, ironic seeing that the main villains of the Raiders movie were "German" Nazis.
* A Disney style tour is done when Stan and Francine seek to learn more about Tearjerker's diabolical plot. As Stan goes through the tour, you can see Michael Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Bill Nye, and other famous movie stars in the background.
* Another movie cited is the "Austin Powers" series. Roger attempts an escape in a tear shaped escape pod and the mountain face is shaped like Roger, just like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers series.
* The music from the opening sequence is from Chandra Barot's 1978 Hindi film, Don. Also the British agent killed by Stan, is the exact character of a typical James Bond.
* Tchochkie and Schmear are both Yiddish words. Tchotchke means "small knickknacks", and schmear means "a bunch of things together".
* One of Tearjerker (Roger)'s henchmen is called Gums, which is a parody of Jaws.
* The replacing of actors by robots is taken from the original "Casino Royale," where politicians are replaced by robots.
* In the ending scene, the TearJerker's burned hand is taken from Anakin Skywalker's hand in "".
* When Johnny Depp is being taken off to the spa by Mani and Pedi, Pedi makes a remark that he's going to 'try and touch Gilbert's Grapes' a reference to the Depp film "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?".
*Tearjerker claimed to audition for "Monsters Ball" in 2002, despite the fact that "Monsters Ball' was released in 2001.
* The Blind item in the Coca-Cola movie quiz is Drew Barrymore.
* The music for the opening credits of this episode is the same opening music for the 1978 "Bollywood" classic DON which starred Amitabh Bachchan.
* When Mani and Pedi run after Stan and shock against a post because they were holding hands, it possibly refers to the The Adventures of Tintin's comic book The Black Island, when Thomson and Thompson shock against a post because they were handcuffed to each other.
* After Peacenickel calls Stan "murderer", Stan asks her "Why don't you shut up?". In Spanish this means "¿Por qué no te callas?", the famous phrase Juan Carlos I of Spain said to Hugo Chávez.

References