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Recap / American Dad S 4 E 10 Tearjerker

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In this parody of the James Bond films, Agent Stan Smith is sent to investigate the mysterious Tearjerker (played by Roger) who is abducting the world's celebrities.


Tropes:

  • Awesome, but Impractical: All of S's (Steve) gadgets are about making women's breasts bigger.
  • Breast Expansion: Sexpun (Francine) puts on one of S's breast enlarging rings, which causes her breasts to grow large enough to break the rope she was tied to.
  • Celibate Hero: Stan is a virgin and saving himself for marriage. Sexpun is shocked to find that it's true when they have sex on their wedding night.
    Sexpun: Oh my God, you really are a virgin.
    Stan: What? That's not good?
    Sexpun: No. It's awful.
  • Chekhov's Gun: S only appears in one scene and his gadgets only seem useful for enlarging women's breasts. Later on, the ring he gives Stan helps Sexpun break out of her rope, allowing her and Stan to foil Tearjerker's plan.
  • Die Laughing: While everyone is crying themselves to death over Oscar Gold, audiences in Tehran are laughing hysterically, implying that they will laugh themselves to death.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Tearjerker wants to make the whole world cry itself to death just because he had one bad audition in Hollywood.
  • Distracted by the Sexy: After Sexpun's Breast Expansion, Stan keeps getting distracted by her cleavage to the point Sexpun has to snap him out of it.
  • The End... Or Is It?: Subverted. At the end of the episode, Tearjerker's hand rises out of the volcano, with "The End" getting a question mark. After a moment, his hand goes limp and falls back in, removing the question mark.
  • Femme Fatale: Sexpun is one of Tearjerker's henchmen and he tries to use her to kill Stan. However, she's caught off-guard when Stan suddenly proposes to her as he's saving himself for marriage.
  • Foil: Stan serves as one for James Bond. Whereas Bond is a suave, intelligent lady's man, Stan is a complete idiot who is also a virgin.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: The entire episode plays out like a James Bond movie.
  • Funny Background Event: When audiences around the world are leaving the movie theaters to see pictures of celebrity babies, a crocodile can be seen leaving the theater in Australia.
  • The Ghost: Mike, the bad contractor Tearjerker hired just because he was attractive, is never seen or heard. At one point, Tearjerker has a Newhart Phonecall with him.
  • High-Class Glass: Tearjerker is always shown wearing a monocle.
  • Lame Pun Reaction: Bullock has himself and Stan dressed as geishas so that they could be "secret Asians." Stan lampshades how bad the pun was, and the fact that he spent a 16-hour flight to get to Japan, and then approves of the joke.
  • Literal-Minded: Sexpun asks Stan if he has a light, ie a cigarette lighter, to which he takes out a flashlight and shines it on her cigarette.
  • Mandatory Line: Both Hayley and Steve only appear in one scene each.
  • Oscar Bait: Tearjerker's film Oscar Gold is contrived to combine all the traditional ingredients of Oscar Bait in a single feature: child protagonist, fighting disability and addiction, death of a loved one and subsequent epiphany, all within the context of a black-and-white period drama set during the Holocaust.
  • Please Wake Up: As he tries to make his escape, Tearjerker tells Stan that he has another film that's even sadder than Oscar Gold, which is just six hours of a baby chimp trying to revive its dead mother.
  • Punny Name: Keeping in line with the James Bond theme, Francine's name is Sexpun T'Come.
  • Running Gag: Tearjerker's exasperation with the shoddy work Mike the contractor did on his lair.
    Tearjerker: Never hire a contractor just because he's gorgeous.
  • Stab the Picture: Played for Laughs when Sexpun throws a knife at a picture of Stan.
    Tearjerker: Oh, you can throw a knife. You know what you can't throw? A party. For my birthday! Which was Wednesday! [starts crying] I remembered yours!
  • Supervillain Lair: Tearjerker's island. A Running Gag shows the shoddy construction such as a tour that ends in Tearjerker's office and poles in the middle of the hallway. At one point, Tearjerker calls his contractor to complain about his work.
  • You Have Failed Me: Tearjerker sends the Professor (Chuck White) into a death pool for failing to solve the problem with the robots drinking milk.

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