When it comes to Christmas Specials, you can have your Grinches and your Rudolphs. If you want to spend the Christmas season watching Charlie Brown narrowly avoid suicide for another year, you go for it, man. I like my Christmas specials edgy, profane, and barely about Christmas at all. That's why American Dad's "Rapture's Delight" is not only one of the 100 Episodes I Love, but also my favorite Christmas Special of all-time, along with the sixth season's gorily fantastic "For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls." I guess what I'm saying is, American Dad consistently puts out the best Christmas-themed episodes of anything else on TV."Rapture's Delight" opens with the Smiths running late for church. The parking lot is packed--it being Christmas morning and all--and Stan is enraged that the pews are packed with phony, once-a-year Christians. To calm him down, Francine takes Stan into the supply closet/slow janitor's living quarters and has sex with him. When they emerge from the closet minutes later, the church is littered with discarded clothing and the congregation, including Hayley and Steve, the Smiths' children, are soaring into the heavens, buck-naked. Stan blames Francine for ruining his chances of being raptured, which causes a rift between them. After Stan chooses to pledge his allegiance to a man claiming to be Jesus Christ--He's not and he sexually assaults Stan in a trash-strewn alley! Merry Christmas, everybody!--Francine leaves him, meets the real Jesus in a 24-hour diner, and becomes the returned Messiah's girlfriend.
We now jump seven years into the future, to a post-apocalyptic America overrun by demons. Stan sits in a saloon, alone and hook-handed, drinking. He is approach by Jesus who tells him that Francine has been abducted by the Anti-Christ, a goofy villain inspired by the old Bat-Man show from the 60's. Stan agrees to help Jesus under one condition: as soon as Francine is safe, Stan gets to be raptured. Jesus agrees and with Roger's help, they infiltrate the Anti-Christ's headquarters and rescue Francine. During the battle, Stan is fatally wounded and Francine finds that he has been wearing their wedding rings around his neck since the day she left him. Stan demands that Francine and Jesus leave the Anti-Christ's lair, as he intends to blow it up. They do. Stan blows up.
Stan is now in Heaven, being led to his own personal paradise for all of eternity. His Heaven ends up being his home with his family on Christmas morning. It's a Christmas miracle!
Now, I'm sure most of you just read this and thought, "What the hell?!" Is this an American Dad episode for beginners? Probably not. It does however display one of American Dad's strengths over every other program associated with FOX's Sunday night Animation Domination block of television. AD doesn't give a shit. They do what they want to do, no matter how silly, weird, dark, or insane it sounds, and the results are, more often than not, amazingly successful. "Rapture's Delight" is a mini epic. It's also hilarious. Christmasy? Not so much.
Moments I LoveRoger: Oh, I love your religion! Virgin birth! Water into wine! It's like Harry Potter, but it causes genocide and bad folk music.
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Stan: Damn your clumsy Christmas sex metaphors!
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This explanation of the Ratpure for children:
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Steve's personal Heaven includes a buxom, scantily-clad woman riding a cheeseburger-pooping unicorn. ("Pepperjack cheese. It's my Heaven.")
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Roger: Didn't you hear the puppets? Demons are coming to rape our skulls!
