Here’s how “Flavortown” sees American Dad pay a bizarre homage to culinary legend Guy Fieri. Since the Food Network series Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives made him a household name back in the late 2000s, Guy Fieri has cemented his status as a pop culture icon. With his frosted tips, two-toned goatee and loud bowling shirts, Fieri is instantly recognizable and his down-to-earth approach to cuisine and championing of comfort food and no-frills eateries has earned him many fans.
Guy Fieri might be loved by many, but his larger-than-life personality and style make him a prime target for parody. When the Food Network star’s New York restaurant Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar opened to brutal reviews in 2012 a parody website for the eatery sprang up advertising fake dishes like the Superbowl Bash Bro’det (a bidet filled with “hamburger-fisted pig skins” and Velveeta cheese), while Bobby Moynihan’s Fieri impressions are a running gag on Saturday Night Live.
In 2019 American Dad produced a Guy Fieri-focused episode that paid hilarious homage to the TV personality. Titled “Flavortown” in reference to Fieri’s catchphrase, the episode opens with Stan, Francine, Hayley and Jeff playing The Newlywed Game on family game night which reveals two things: Stan is a massive fan of Guy Fieri and Jeff has no identity apart from smoking weed. At Stan’s suggestion, Jeff takes a job at a pizza place to broaden his horizons and is graced by a Guy Fieri visit who happens to be in Langley Falls scouting locations for an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives.
Fieri takes a shine to Jeff and asks him to join his gang of pizza-loving bros (dubbed “the Pesto Crew”), which super-fan Stan encourages. Soon enough Jeff is acting like a boisterous bro, coming out with Fieri-isms and dressing exactly like his new pal – frosted tips, wraparound sunglasses and garish shirts included. When Fieri announces he’s retiring he insists his underling take over his mantle, but Jeff’s new Fieri-focused identity takes over his whole personality which starts to worry -and annoy - the Smiths.
Stan soon deduces that something supernatural is going on and discovers his hero (or at least the American Dad version of chef Guy Fieri) is an ancient demon known as “the Eternal Fieri” who has been around since the dawn of mankind and survives by possessing human bodies and eating its own weight in food. When his human host inevitably gets diabetes, the Eternal Fieri jumps to another body and Jeff is the latest victim. To banish the demon from Jeff’s body, Stan must return Fieri to the primordial sludge from whence he came – a spicy habanero mango-infused queso hidden away in Flavortown, which is apparently a real place and not just a Fieri catchphrase.
Luckily, Stan ends up saving Jeff but does so rather reluctantly as he prefers the company of his hero Guy Fieri over his son-in-law’s – even if he is a demon. Some celebrities wouldn’t take too kindly to being lampooned in an episode of American Dad but Guy Fieri was a good sport about his portrayal as a ravenous, body-hopping demon. After “Flavortown” aired Fieri posted a clip of the episode on Twitter and said, “Fist bump to the #AmericanDad crew … stoked to be included!”, so at least he doesn’t take himself too seriously.