4. Poor Puppy Stan's Best Friend
For the record I'm a dog person, I have my own and I love them. So on a personal note the Episode "Stan's Best Friend" was difficult to watch. I believe even if you're not a dog person you would have found the show hard to swallow. The story goes that Stan hates dogs but forms a special bond with Kisses, a puppy Francine gets for Steve. Yet in true American Dad fashion, we all know trouble's ahead when Stan throws Kisses a frisbee and the puppy races on the road to catch it. Yet despite the audience fearing the worst when they see the care travelling down the same road, the scriptwriters defy your expectations Kisses catches the frisbee while avoiding being hit and all ends well. But just as everyone breathes a sigh of relief, a random hot air balloon which for some unknown reason is being piloted by cats in pirate outfits lands on the road, crushing Kisses in a pool of blood. I didn't laugh at that scene or what happened next. Kisses is now on life support and should die but Stan has a dodgy surgeon save the poor puppy at any cost. Stan then decides to surprise his family by bringing Kisses home, only the dog is looking much more like a mutant, missing its skin and with parts of his body in the wrong place. The family barring Stan, and probably most of the viewers watching are mortified. It's so dire that Steve starts crying and begs for Kisses to be killed. For me those two scenes were terrible and I'm sure would have had animal rights activists and pet owners outraged. I guess the fact that the whole episode was based around the dog means they couldn't really leave out certain bits but I'm sure they could have changed a few parts to make the episode easier to view. As it was, it was just all sorts of disturbing.