Pizza Bagels

S7 E15: Less Money, Mo' Problems

American Dad, 2005.

At last, a parable for our time, delivered not from a TED Talk stage, but from a sample tray of molten pizza bagels in the fluorescent purgatory of a grocery store aisle.

In this episode, Stan Smith, the series’ musclebound foot soldier of American exceptionalism, decides to prove once and for all that minimum wage is livable, desirable even. How? By forcibly subjecting himself and his wife Francine to thirty days of no-frills budget austerity. The goal: prove a point to his daughter and her stoner husband, Jeff, both of whom—he believes—are too lazy to launch.

They last, conservatively, forty-six hours.

The true genius of “Less Money, Mo’ Problems” lies not in its depiction of poverty, but in its depiction of how quickly the facade of self-sufficiency falls apart when confronted with hunger. With their Aztek-car-home repossessed and no quarters left for potatoes or dignity, Stan does what any rational adult would do: he takes Francine on a date to the grocery store for dinner. Not shopping—eating. They make a meal of free samples, and in what may be the show’s most honest visual metaphor for late capitalism, attempt to lie to the sample attendant to get seconds. Of pizza bagels.

It doesn’t end well.

Stan is later ambushed in the parking lot by Pizza Bagel maker Jonah, and the sample attendant, his partner Rebecca. Their assault is swift, theatrical, and fueled by the righteous rage of small business owners whose product has been consumed—but not purchased—by a man who thought himself above the system, only to find himself devoured by it. It is Waiting for Godot, but with processed cheese and retail violence.

Elsewhere in the episode, Roger and Steve con their way into a Ferrari test drive, which, like most B-plots in American Dad, is both completely disconnected from the main storyline and eerily more poignant than it has any right to be. But it’s Stan and Francine’s descent—via Aztek, via pantry, via sidewalk—that carries the beating heart of this satire.

This is a story about what happens when someone who has always had money decides to cosplay not having money—and then realizes too late that the performance isn’t funny to those who can’t take off the costume. The pizza bagels are free, until they aren’t. The economy has a sample tray, but not a second helping.

And if you’ve never had to dance in the street for a man with a bag of potatoes, count yourself lucky.

Make it! Pizza bagels from The Kitchn.