There’s an old adage about going back to the well once too often. It’s too bad that Seth MacFarlane didn’t heed this warning when he tried to recreate his successful Family Guy series, in the form of this strained, unoriginal animated comedy. MacFarlane should have been content with catching lightning in a bottle once but decided to do a cartoon cloning experiment instead. American Dad is Family Guy lite. The major difference between these two MacFarlane series is that American Dad is loaded with lots of jokes at the expense of right-wing conservatives. This isn’t surprising, considering that the show was conceived during the Bush era, when the former President was at an all-time low in popularity and everyone was mocking Republican politics. Therefore, MacFarlane wrote his Family Guy reboot to reflect the political climate. Perhaps its timeliness explains how it was able to survive past the first season or maybe it’s just because Family Guy fans are looking at American Dad to give them their Family Guy fix. It’s for the novelty, because the series is a big “Been-there-done-that’ affair.
The series follows the misadventures of dim-witted CIA man Stan Smith, (voiced by MacFarlane himself), whose IQ ranks down there somewhere with Homer Simpson (although he’s nowhere near as funny as Homer). Stan is not above abusing his power if it helps him to do so, which makes him less sympathetic than Homer Simpson. Stan also has to deal with his typical sitcom family. His level-headed, long-suffering wife Francine (What sitcom husband doesn’t have a smarter wife?), his liberal daughter Haley, and his dweeb of a son Steve, who tries hard to be cool but has zero luck with girls. Steve is an Urkel-caliber Uber-nerd.
To round out Stan’s wacky home life, he also has an alien named Roger living with him. Stan found Roger at Area 51 and now Roger lives exclusively inside the Smith home, unable to go outside, despite his requests to borrow the car. Roger is so annoyed by being housebound that he spends his time eating junk food while making sarcastic and critical comments about the goings-on in the Smith home. He is a cross between Stewie Griffin and ALF. And as if Roger’s presence wasn‘t enough, there is also a talking goldfish named Klaus with the brain of an Olympic swimming champ in its head, due to a botched government experiment. Klaus exists only to spit out the occasional one-liner and lust after Francine. At least Brian the talking dog could get around on his own and get into trouble. Klaus the fish is redundant considering we already have Roger who has more lines.
Just to ram home the anti-conservative humor, Stan lives next door to a gay couple. The anti-GOP humor comes fast and often, including frequent mentions of Sean Hannity and FOX news. The show tries to be a modern All in the Family but it lacks the fresh, clever writing of a great show like that. The writers are too caught up in trying to duplicate Family Guy. There are occasional clever moments but for the most part, the humor is second-hand and stale.
The animation looks just like the animation in Family Guy. The characters look and sound like the characters in Family Guy. Perhaps a different visual style would help to differentiate it from its predecessor and help it find the identity it lacks. American Dad will probably seem much funnier to anyone who hasn’t seen Family Guy before. The show tires hard to be edgy and non-P.C., with episodes like “Raptures Delight” where Stan meets the Anti-Christ, but we’ve all seen so many edgy cartoons that American Dad is just a voice in the chorus.
American Dad isn’t terrible but it commits the sin of fitting into a well-worn mold. After The Simpsons, King of the Hill and Family Guy, this show just screams ‘Same-old-same-old’. Seth MacFarlane is on auto-pilot here, rehashing Family Guy with a left-wing twist.
American Dad: Volume 6 is a 3-disc set, containing 18 episodes of the show.
DVD Bonus Features
The DVD extras include an audio commentary on select episodes, alternate audio commentaries on select episodes featuring “the Interdisciplinary Collective for American Dad Studies”, deleted scenes, a ‘making of’ segment about the episode "Raptures Delight", the script for "Raptures Delight", and a feature called “American Dad Honors its Four-Legged Friends”.
"American Dad: Volume 6" is on sale April 19, 2011 and is not rated. Animation, Comedy. Directed by Seth Macfarlane, Various. Written by Seth MacFarlane, Mike Barker, Matt Weitzman. Starring Rachel Macfarlane, Scott Grimes, Seth MacFarlane, Wendy Schaal.
