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Roger

Revision as of 17:08, 15 September 2014 by Buckimion (talk | contribs) (→‎Season 10)
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Roger is one of the main characters in the animated comedy series American Dad!. He is a space alien whose appearance resembles that of the greys living with the Smith family. Roger is sarcastic, surly, amoral, self-centered, hedonistic, alcoholic, and speaks with a swish. Spending his time watching trash TV, eating junk food, doing drugs, and dressing up a variety of personas, Roger is considered to be the breakout character of the show.

Roger came to live with the Smith family after saving Stan Smith's life in Area 51. He has lived with the Smiths for four years. Seth MacFarlane provides Roger's flamboyant speech pattern in a parody of Paul Lynde.

Biography

Little is known about Roger's past; Stan recounts how he landed on Earth sixty years ago at Roswell in "Roger Codger". His planet is never seen or described in-depth, though according to him, it sounds fairly similar to Earth, although Roger claims the climate of his home world is 400 degrees colder than most ecosystems of Earth, with the possible exception of Antarctica in "The Most Adequate Christmas Ever". In "Of Ice and Men" he mentions that snow reminds him of his home planet, and figure skating apparently exists there; he has also commented that the planet has stores like Wal-Mart and colleges, in fact, Roger's mothership is revealed to be a giant shopping mall in "Lost in Space". For a long time, his reasons for coming to Earth were a mystery as well: he does claim that the reason he came was to collect a sample of hepatitis, although since arriving he seems to mostly be mooching, and seems in no hurry to go back home. In the pilot he was supposed to try to contact his home world, but got distracted by an "I Love The 80s" marathon. It was revealed in "Weiner of Our Discontent" that he believes he came to earth to be "The Decider", seeing if the planet was worth saving or to destroy it. This belief was crushed horribly when he discovered in his spaceship a note that stated that the ship was a test model and he was in it as a "crash test dummy", meaning his own species had abandoned him on the planet. It is also known that Roger "invented" disco and became a millionaire in the 1970s after he discovered a cassette tape from the future in "The Best Christmas Story Never", thereby creating a time paradox, but he lost his fortune after disco died.

Four years prior to the series, he was incarcerated by the CIA in Area 51, when Stan Smith, then an intelligence officer, was on duty at the base. Tired of living in a laboratory, he escaped his holding cell, thus triggering a lockdown investigation. Stan tracked him down in a kitchen and was about to kill him before Roger pleaded for mercy, but the security team threw a grenade into the room, from which Roger pulled Stan to safety. They slid down a laundry chute into a waiting truck. Grateful to Roger for saving his life, Stan offered to repay him in any way at all, leading to his addition to the Smith family. As a means of convincing the family to let him stay, Stan presented him as a birthday present to Steve for his tenth birthday. While Hayley, Francine and Klaus were initially horrified of him, Steve was delighted to have his own alien. By the start of the series, however, the whole family seems to have come to terms with him.

Family

Almost nothing is known of Roger's natural family. It was revealed in "The Best Christmas Story Never" that he has a mother who is apparently deceased, since Roger looks upward while speaking to her, indicating she is in heaven or the afterlife. Either that or she is in space, which would also be above. In "Joint Custody", Roger reveals that his mother suffered from arthritis. In "Family Affair", it is seen that Roger can never stay with one human family, this turned out because of first human family that took him in, The Logan Family, abandoning him. After he comes to terms with this, Roger decides to stay with the Smith family for ever more. He is replaced, however, by Andy Dick in "You Debt Your Life" when the life-debt Stan owed Roger was repaid and thus Roger was kicked out. However, Stan realizes that he misses Roger despite his annoying, selfish, and greedy actions and the alien and the Smith family were reunited once more.

Rogers Place 2

Profession

On Earth he creates different jobs for his various personas, such as a psychologist, a bounty hunter, a surgeon, etc. His only stable job, however, is as a bartender in Roger's Place, his bar in the attic, where various members of the Smith family usually congregate. Mostly Roger just deals with the boredom of being cooped up in the attic all day by dressing up in various costumes and creating pretend jobs for him to go to.

Personality

Roger describes himself in "You Debt Your Life" as a "fey pansexual alcoholic non-human". Roger's flamboyant and dramatic nature is enhanced by his alcohol dependency. Roger is frequently childish, showing an affinity for character role-playing, tantrums, and pranks, as well as being quite petty, spiteful, greedy, and cruel. In "Stannie Get Your Gun", he convinced Steve he was adopted in retaliation for Steve having eaten the last cookie, and in "Dope & Faith" he threatened Steve's life by having him employed in a meth lab and convincing him he is at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from the Harry Potter novels. In "Tears of a Clooney" he adopted a group of foster children with the intent to use them as slave labor on his vineyard, and when he becomes dictator of a Caribbean island named General Juanito Pequeño in "Moon Over Isla Island", he demanded extravagant and vain services from the populace, such as painting the island yellow.

It is explained in "Frannie 911" that acting in a spirit of human courteousness and general niceness is poisonous to Roger, and he needs to clear his system of unpleasantness or risk death. Roger also has a history of holding grudges as shown in "Great Space Roaster", as he tried to kill the Smith family for insulting him at his Comedy roast, by starting a gas leak causing an explosion, hiring a hitman to shoot them, removing the brakes from Stan's vehicle, and writing death threats to Merlin Olsen for seven years after Father Murphy was canceled. Roger has a weak nature and will change sides in an argument almost immediately if he feels threatened. Instead of taking responsibility Roger will often deny making mistakes.

Despite his faults, Roger genuinely cares about the Smith family and in the episode "Roger Codger" he was willing to allow Stan to kill him when they were cornered by the CIA, in order to prevent them from torturing him into telling them which family had been hiding him. In the same episode it was revealed that Roger had risked being blown up in order to save Stan even though he'd only just met him. Roger also once admitted that he wasn't a fighter, indicating that he was aware of his own weakness.

Roger is also shown to be a dangerous sociopath committing theft, various drug offenses and many counts of murder throughout the series. In "Virtual In-Stanity", he kills five people plus a planeload of innocent victims for twenty dollars and mentions killing six others for nineteen dollars.

Alter Egos/Disguises

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Main Article: Roger's Disguises

Roger has a large book in his attic room filled with the names of all the people he knows and the aliases they know him as, as well as a seemingly never-ending carousel of outfits. Almost everyone besides the Smith family cannot tell one of Roger's disguises from another although "Stanny Tendergrass" shows that even among the family there are disguises that fool the Smiths. In "Joint Custody", he says he hates disguises, then a few scenes later says he loves disguises, and introduces the "Roger Fashion Montage!". In "Oedipal Panties" his carousel of thousands of outfits is shown. In addition, in the opening sequences of episodes, Roger will appear in the car in one of his disguises from past episodes and then be pushed back down in the car by Stan. Some of his disguises are:

Season 1

Season 2

Roger as Kevin Bacon

Roger as Kevin Bacon.

Season 3

Season 4

Phantom1

Roger as "The Phantom of the Telethon"

Season 5

Season 6

Martinsugar

Martin Sugar about to put on trial

Season 7

Season 8

Season 9

Season 10

Wheels and the Legman

"Wheels and the Legman" are the recurring alter-egos of Steve and Roger respectively. They are a crime-solving duo created by the two while watching Tex and Mex, about a crime-solving duo with conflicting personalities but work well together. However, upon the creation of the characters, initially, both Roger and Steve wanted to be "Wheels". They settle on Steve when he notes something suspicious about Roger's "angel" partner. They later re-team to search for Hayley's iPod. In "100 A.D.", Klaus notes that every single "mystery" follows this formula:

1. They see a mystery to solve 2. They bicker and argue for the entire episode 3. The culprit always turns out to be Roger

At that point, the two become stuck for a plotline, until they hear about Hayley and Jeff Fischer eloping and Stan giving away $50,000 to whoever can find them.

  • Appearances of Wheels and the Legman

Notes

  • In "All About Steve " it is shown that Roger can typically sleep in a state of suicidal hanging.
  • The original idea for Roger was that he was like the T.V. character ALF, where he spent all day in the Smith residence and comments on the world, but the staff thought it would be funnier to have him wear disguises and have his own stories out in the real world. [1]
  • He is an accomplished drummer in "American Dream Factory" due to the fact that he has no bones in his arms.
  • In "Frannie 911", Roger's species "needs to get their bitchyness out" or it poisons them, causing symptoms and sickness which get worse the longer an alien of Roger's species is nice. These include:
    • Cramps and pains
    • Headaches
    • Vomiting
    • Releasing gunk through the side of the head
    • Weakness and severe skinniness
    • Pale, flaking skin
  • He claims never to have eaten a vegetable in his life, but in "Fartbreak Hotel", he not only eats okra, he knows what eating it will do to him - namely, cause him to fart toxic gas.
  • In the "Meet the Quagmires" episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin alters history. At the end of the episode when he thinks that the timeline has been repaired, he finds that Roger now lives with the Griffin family instead of the Smith family. He is also seen at the bar in "Blue Harvest". Roger was also member of the cast of "Its a Trap!" along with Klaus. Roger also appears in Rallo's belt buckle in "Ain't Nothin' But Mutton Bustin'" in The Cleveland Show.
  • When under the influence of cocaine in "Dope & Faith", he becomes incredibly focused and displays Matrix-like fighting moves. And while under the influence of marijuana in "Joint Custody", he has been known to become as light as air. The former's effects are very brief.
  • Roger is shown in "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man" to enter a reproductive cycle in which:
    • He produces breast milk.
    • He lays an egg inside a host, male or female, through oral contact. The host can pass the egg onto another through the same method.
  • He can survive in the vacuum of space in "Great Space Roaster".
  • In the "Pilot" episode it is stated and showed that ooze called xenoplasm shoots out of his body every seven hours. This is shown again in "Roger Codger", where he does it whenever he feels stressed before entering hibernation, and once again in "Office Spaceman", where he does it deliberately.
  • It is shown in "Big Trouble in Little Langley" that Roger's skin is fireproof, although he was still able to feel shock or pain when Stan sets him on fire at the adoption agency, and it did leave his skin darkened. He also reacted with shock and/or pain when he burned his hands on hot turkeys in "Four Little Words". He also showed no sign of pain in "Stan's Food Restaurant" when Stan accidentally held a blowtorch to close to his face, but it did manage to blacken his face.
  • Roger is shown in "Roger 'n' Me" to be able to record people's memories through sexual fingering.
  • Roger stated in "Threat Levels" that his species is immune to all human ailments. However, this was most likely false, as Stan stated in the same episode that he still got a cold sore.
  • His heart is in his left buttock, and his genitals are located under his left armpit.
  • In "One Little Word" and "There Will Be Bad Blood", Roger's blood is shown to be purple. However, in Klaus' fantasy in "Irregarding Steve", it is yellow, and in "Season's Beatings", "Ricky Spanish" and "Faking Bad", it is red like human blood.
  • He is shown in "Oedipal Panties" to be able to swallow an entire banana whole, implying he has no gag reflex.
  • It is shown in "A Smith In The Hand" that Roger has 'pockets' in his flesh that he can keep things in and through which his internal organs can be accessed. Also in the same episode, it is shown that when Roger's pancreas is removed, it becomes a vicious beast.
  • He was part of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team in "The Return of the Bling".
  • At the age of 1601, his species will go through puberty as shown in "Great Space Roaster" which is strange as he could already reproduce as per "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man".
  • In "Choosy Wives Choose Smith", Roger has the ability to float on water even when weighed down by Stan. He demonstrates this ability again in "Hurricane!".
  • In "Homeland Insecurity," "Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option" and "Rapture's Delight," Roger is shown to poop golden, gem-encrusted turds after eating certain foods such as tacos.
  • In "I Am the Walrus", Roger says he ate his own father at 14 and still keeps bits of his leg.
  • Roger said that he once fought for the Viet Cong in "42-Year-Old Virgin".
  • His favorite movie is "Miller's Crossing" as revealed in "Roger 'n' Me".
  • In "Failure is not a Factory-Installed Option", he accidentally creates a drive-in cinema and enjoys watching films on the old-fashioned projector that he finds in 'his' attic.
  • Roger is shown in "A.T. The Abusive Terrestrial" to have a long, frog-like tongue, but in "Great Space Roaster" his tongue is forked and more snake-like, and in "Family Affair" and "A Piñata Named Desire", it is more of a long, pointed tongue.
  • Roger appears to have 4 fingers on each hand and 3 toes on each foot.
  • Jesus stated in "Rapture's Delight" that Roger's species was one of God's "side-projects".
  • It is shown in "The Wrestler" that Roger's legs are strong enough to push a tree across a yard.
  • He demonstrates super-speed in "Jenny Fromdabloc", during which he is able to fake his persona's death by placing a dummy in front of a bus without being detected and appear as a different character.
  • Roger points out that his species has six stages of grief, instead of the established human five in "Spelling Bee My Baby".
  • He's shown in "Lost in Space" as the one that ruined Emperor Zing's love life by cheating on him.
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