Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth

"Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth"
American Dad! episode
Episode no.	Season 6 Episode 10
Directed by	Rodney Clouden
Written by	Matt Fusfeld Alex Cuthbertson
Production code	5AJN01
Original air date	January 3, 2010 (2010-01-03)
Guest appearances
Curtis Armstrong as Snot Lonstein Mike Barker as Terry Bates Alex Cuthbertson Anthony DeMarco Matt Fusfeld Don Johnson Richard Kind as Mr. Tuttle Michael McShane as Horse Whisperer Erik Sommers Daisuke Suzuki as Toshi Yoshida Eddie Kaye Thomas as Barry Robinson

"Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth" is the tenth episode of the sixth season of American Dad!. It aired on January 3, 2010 on Fox and is the first American Dad! episode to air in 16:9 720p high-definition. In the episode, when Stan gets told by Francine to get rid of his gas-guzzling SUV, he and Roger hatch up a plan at the local horse track to avoid losing his car. Meanwhile, Steve and his friends help an obese man out of his bedroom.

Plot

Because of the economic recession, the Smiths are forced to make cutbacks. When Roger tells Francine that Stan regularly spends $400 on gas for his SUV, she threatens to replace his vehicle with a Hybrid. In an attempt to save his SUV, Stan makes a bet on a local horse at a track stadium, only to watch the horse finish the race last. Outraged, Stan confronts the jockey, discovering that the jockey is Roger. Roger explains that he has been giving the horse tranquilizers to hold it back and reduce its odds. When the horse owner plans to kill the horse in order to prevent further monetary loss, Roger offers to buy it from him, and asks Stan for money. Stan is reluctant at first, but following Roger's promise that the horse is a guaranteed winner, he decides to buy it using his family's second mortgage. Roger tells Francine about the plan when she lectures Roger about eating too much cream cheese. Francine is furious, but decides to trust Stan. Meanwhile, Steve and his friends get employed by an old friend, Mr. Tuttle, who has over time become an obese recluse after his wife's death. In order to receive their paycheck, Snot volunteers to retrieve Mr. Tuttle's wallet from his back pocket, but becomes trapped underneath him. Upon running to his dad for help, Steve learns from Klaus that Stan had switched his brain with the horse's. Steve uses the horse, in Stan's body, to help lift Mr. Tuttle and free Snot. Mr. Tuttle then reveals he had the money in his neck fat instead of his back pocket and that he tricked them into staying with him due to his loneliness. Steve then decides to reintroduce him to the neighborhood, with the horse in Stan's body pulling him. At the end of the episode, Stan in the horse's body goes to Hollywood with Roger so that the two of them can ride together with Steven Spielberg and his talking horse.

Reception

Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club gave the episode a B, saying "You often hear in articles about TV writers rooms about a big white board where possible plotlines are written down, just in case the writers run out of ideas for new episodes. I kind of wonder just how long "Stan becomes a horse" was written on the American Dad board, but there was something goofily charming about the way this all played out - much less the way that everything tied together in the end - that made the episode end on a high enough note for me to give it a Grade: B." The episode was watched by a total of 5.91 million people, this made it the fourth most watched show on Animation Domination that night, losing to The Cleveland Show, Family Guy and The Simpsons with 8.65 million.

External links

• "Don't Look a Smith Horse in the Mouth" at IMDb