Flirting With Disaster (American Dad!)

Flirting With Disaster is the 18th episode of Season 6 of American Dad! and the 114th episode of the series overall. It aired on May 15, 2011 on FOX and was viewed from 3.89 million households.

Plot
Francine gets a job as the receptionist job at Stan's CIA office, which cramps his style and his ability to flirt with co-workers. When Francine retaliates with a little flirting of her own, war breaks out at work. Meanwhile, Steve & Roger make bird houses as a business.



Why It's a Disaster

 * 1) False advertising: The beginning of the episode makes out that the main plot of the episode would be a parody of The Office, but with the setting changed to the CIA, however, that part of the episode barley gets mentioned as much when Francine gets a job at the CIA as the receptionist.
 * 2) * The reason given for the is that Chinese spies (who are pretending to be Dutch) are filming for CIA secrets, who only really show up again almost towards the end of the episode, just so Stan can learn his lesson.
 * 3) Speaking of Stan, he is really unlikable in this episode, as he doesn't want Francine to know that he flirts with the women who work at the CIA. Then, when Francine starts doing it to get back at him, he (although not knowingly) causes Lorraine to give Francine an acid attack to her face, which makes Francine's face to look ugly & disfigured.
 * 4) Lorraine, a co-worker of Stan’s, is at her absolute worst in the episode as she throws acid at Francine’s face just because Francine replaced Lorraine as CIA secretary.  Aside from getting arrested, she does not receive much satisfying karma. In real life throwing acid at the face of a co-worker warrants automatic grounds to get fired as it was an assault, meaning Lorraine should have been fired from the CIA over the acid stunt.
 * 5) The subplot is not much better either as it is a predictable “Roger screws over Steve” episode as it is obvious that when Roger and Steve were going to set up a birdhouse business, Roger was going to backstab Steve in some way as shown when he causes the death of a family of birds (who have just had chicks), all because he used cheap screws to help Steve build it, and spent the rest of it on drugs and women
 * 6) The ending to the subplot is also very disturbing as Roger OD’s on drugs right after apologizing to Steve with Steve refusing to help Roger and letting him die.
 * 7) The subplot also teaches a very bad moral: If someone you know has a drug problem and OD’s in front of you, then you don’t have to help them if they have been a jerk to you or screwed you over as shown with  Steve refusing to help Roger recover from his drug overdose.
 * 8) There's a lot of unconformable scenes after Francine gets her face disfigured, including bits were skin peels off from her face, thankfully, we don't get to see it, till the very end, but it's really unconformable to watch still.
 * 9) * Even then, when we do see her disfigured face, it's really disgusting and just there to be shocking.
 * 10) The scene of the bird house being destroyed and the family of birds getting killed was more sad than funny.
 * 11) The episode has badly aged given that it aired before the #MeToo movement as the episode has co-worker flirting and sexual harassment as important themes and seems to encourage them given that Francine was hired into the CIA as a secretary solely because of her looks and Stan is shown constantly hitting on his female co-workers.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Good Ending: Stan does learn his lesson, and gives up his muscular buttocks to help rebuild Francine's face.
 * 2) Lorraine does get comeuppance in the episode as she gets arrested even though in her next appearance she returns to her old position as a secretary without explanation.
 * 3) The idea of having an episode be a parody of The Office is quite a good concept for an episode, too bad this episode didn't use it to the fullest potential.
 * 4) Some really funny moments, mainly to do with Avery Bullock.

Reception
The episode received mixed reviews and has a 7.3 rating on IMDb. with some fans having criticised it for being quite disporting and mean. Rowan Kaiser of The A.V. Club gave the episode a C+, saying "This episode is remarkably resistant to criticism. In some respects, its reliance on horrific violence and awkward humor make it seem more like Family Guy than American Dad at its best. A conversation between Steve and an apparently-clean Roger that seems like a reference to a movie just outside of my memory exemplifies this – it's awkward, but it's a reference, so it's okay? I'm not sure about this episode of American Dad, but I know what I hate, and I didn't hate that.