The American Dad After School Special

The American Dad After School Special
// The plot in one sentence

Season: 2 Episode: 2
Total Episode Count: 25
Prod. no.: 2AJN05
First Aired: September 17, 2006

Featuring: Stan Smith, Steve Smith, Debbie
Director: Pam Cooke
Writers: Dan Vebber

Newspaper Headline: "Jewish Gynecologist develops Pap Schmear"

Plot: In this episode, Steve, while attempting to escape from gym class, finds a hideout used by a gothic, overweight girl named Debbie whom he finds fascinating and develops a crush on. When Steve tells Stan the latter, he is delighted, and helps Steve to build up the courage to ask her out by using a collar that will kill him within twenty-four hours if he doesn't. However, Stan messes up the device to kill him in twenty-four minutes. Eventually, Steve asks her out, but when Stan sees Debbie for the first time, he's appalled by the fact that she's fat. Francine and Hayley berate him for this, pointing out that he himself is somewhat overweight (though his suit hides it). When Stan realizes they're right, he goes on a crazy exercise program, and gains an unhealthy obsession with his weight. He even gets a verbally abusive personal trainer named Zack.

Steve dates Debbie, not realizing that Roger is in love with her and is watching them when the two are kissing. Meanwhile, Stan is surprised that the more he exercises and the less he eats, the fatter and fatter he gets, and suspects that Francine and Haley are tampering with his vegetables to make him fatter; which turns out to be true. He eventually is suspended from the CIA for his "weight problem" when he passes out during a physical after only taking two steps. What he doesn't realize is that his "weight problem" is that he's actually become horrendously thin---his anorexia has developed to the point he sees himself as getting fatter and fatter, though he's actually become a walking skeleton, as well as hallucinating Zack. (Francine and Hayley's tampering with his food was an unsuccessful attempt to stop it.)

The Smith family forces Stan into an anorexia support group, and while he seems to be eating more, he has actually learned from a girl in the group how to fake eating without actually doing it; and Steve, for his part in helping his father, dumps Debbie, feeling she is the source of Stan's problem. Stan then tries to set Steve up with the anorexic girl, Veronica, he has befriended; and, coincidentally, Roger tricks Debbie to meeting him at the same restaurant at the same time (luring her there by pretending to be part of an Anne Rice fan club). When Francine and Hayley bust into the restaurant, having found out that Stan is cheating on his diet, Steve becomes enraged and yells at Stan, saying that he dumped Debbie, the "best thing that ever happened to [him]", for him. She hears this and they get back together, as Stan overcomes his anorexia.

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