The rest of the Smiths find themselves in a somewhat crazy situation this week too, with the family getting involved in the honey business—or at least attempting to get involved. When Francine finds her allergies running rampant, Hayley reveals that locally sourced honey is actually the best way to fight that sort of thing. These honey exploits make for the perfect sort of American Dad storyline that is broken right from the start, but only barrels harder into its nonsense.

Disaster strikes as soon as the Smiths get going when all of their bees wind up dead courtesy of some ill-placed hornets. With the bees, and therefore any hopes of honey, being out of the question, you’d think that the Smiths would just cut their losses. However Stan continues to embrace his ignorance toward all of this (although his false Burger King knowledge is impressive) as Francine’s condition worsens from allergy outbreak to severe medical issue. Francine’s eventual Akira-like appearance as well as Stan’s homemade poultice remedy are truly horrifying sights. Only a few glimpses of this bee story are shown throughout “The Talented Mr. Dingleberry,” but Francine’s safety is in jeopardy as soon as things begin and her condition only continues to decline.

With the rest of the Smiths being all caught up in their newest pipe dream (“Lo-cal! Ho-ney! Lo-cal! Ho-ney!”), Roger is the only one left to help Steve with his problems and he gives him an angle to retaliate with. As Steve and Roger begin their partnership, Roger announces, “I love a good quest for revenge.” It’s clear his motivation in helping out here is much more based on the possibility of burning others, not because he’s doing a solid for Steve. This unstable balance within Roger ends up becoming the crux of this whole endeavor.

Roger shares with Steve that back in the ‘70s, he was actually half of a very successful ventriloquism duo. In spite of their abilities, Roger’s naturally lewd mouth got him and his partner, Dennis, banned from television and their ventriloquism career tanked accordingly. With Steve appearing talent-less for the school’s big show, Roger’s latent “abilities” as Dudley Dingleberry are exactly what he needs.

This installment is also just full of clever, unusual moments, which stick out and help give things more character. A normal conversation between Roger and Steve, for instance, places Roger within a ceiling vent and has fun with his hampered geography. This is a strong script that knows how to bank on its characters and their ridiculous motivations in order to find its humor. It’s the sort of episode where even if the plots were junk (which they’re not), there would still be plenty of non sequitur weirdness to enjoy.