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American Dad review
by Doom
These days' internet nerds don't quote The Simpsons as much. No, they quote Family Guy, because, from what I'm told, it's supposed to be very ‘hilarius'. Never really taken to Family Guy, which is a nicer way of saying, I hate it with all of my black, twisted heart. But I still decided to watch American Dad [which I received early from the internets] without bias! Seth "Jungle Cubs" MacFarlane's destined for a hit someday, right? After watching American Dad, I can definitively say ‘no' to that assertion. American Dad's political humor is dated, trite and clichéd, and despite what MacFarlane fans might say, it's a ripoff of Family Guy, which in and of itself is a ripoff of the Simpsons [which MacFarlane himself has more or less admitted]. Second-generation copying doesn't work too well, and it shows.
I get it! Bush is a zealot!
American Dad is basically Family Guy if it were written by an annoying guy who never shuts up about politics. The characters are the same – most anything said on American Dad could've been said on Family Guy without it feeling weird. Everything is Family Guy, only slightly blander, which means characters have even LESS dimension, if that's even possible. Stan, the father figure, manages to be extremely hateful with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, worse than even the so-called worst of ‘Jerkass' Homer. His shtick will no doubt get tiresome to even the most avid Family Guy fan mid-season. The rest can barely even be considered characters at this point. Wife is bland, meaningless character, daughter is stereotypical liberal character, alien is gay version of Peter mixed in with Brian, and German goldfish sure is wacky!
Tender emotional moment!
The humor is as one would expect – baseless references, toilet humor, and cutaway gags. But there's one more addition to MacFarlane's roster of comedy – tired political jokes. We get jokes about God calling President Bush [the impression of which sounds more like Clinton, which is just confusing], jokes about the Iraq war, and, how progressive, jokes about the terror alert system. And, of course, a joke about Muslims that's probably borderline racist. These jokes would only provide a chuckle or two six months ago AT MOST, and are so incredibly dated at this time that now it's not even funny. American Dad is not satire. Satire would be using irony or wit to show the problems or the stupidity of the system. American Dad does not do that, it just makes ‘clever' jokes like "OMG THAT TERROR ALRT SYSTEM SURE DOES SUK". It's completely disingenuous to the viewing public when critics call this satire, or even an attempt of satire. It's not satire. It doesn't try to be satire. It tries to be Family Guy with dumb political jokes. The references are weaker, too. They don't have any ‘twist' to them, they're just thrown out there. Mentioning Memento in and of itself is not funny. You have to do something with it to make it humorous. The Simpsons pulls this off. Hell, The Critic even does it. American Dad doesn't.
Terror alerts! So topical.
Like all Seth MacFarlane shows, the plot is secondary to the humor. Kid wants girls to like him. Stan tries futilely to help, even going so far as kidnapping Hillary Duff [yes, that won't be dated in…1 year]. After THAT fails, Stan rigs the student body election for his son, who soon becomes a power-mad dictator as president. After becoming thoroughly unlikeable, they try to shove a tender ‘emotional' moment, even using the clichéd music for it! The alien and daughter have a very meaningless subplot, about the alien doing her term paper if she gives him fatty food. It doesn't really get developed other than scenes showing him eating, and serves no point at all. Because of this, both plots feel substanceless. A worthless plot could've been forgiveable had the show been funny or satirical...but it wasn't.
Terrorism!
The animation is, as one would guess, terrible. Examples: Roger the alien falling on the table, and Stan running through the mall. The direction's standard with nothing too interesting. Camera angles shift for no apparent reason, and the character designs are just plain ugly. And not Simpsons ugly. Ugly ugly. Seth has mentioned he makes his characters ugly intentionally, but at least the Simpsons are aesthetically pleasing. These are just...ugh. Washed out colors evoke something I disliked about Family Guy, too. It's just so...bland.
Overall, American Dad seems unfinished. There are no character dynamics to speak of –either animosity or the straight man to a wacky zinger. It's almost as if some teenage fans of Family Guy decided to make their own version of it, with what they think is ‘edgy political humor', which turns out to be jokes about Iraq [those won't become dated!!!]. It could improve, but I really doubt it. There's just nothing engaging about the concept at all, and Family Guy's coming back in May, so fans of the cutaways and reference humor will surely look to that instead of American Dad. Other critics are already slamming it, and I doubt it'll last very long on FOX [13 episodes, at most]. But thanks to strong Superbowl ratings, which seem to be very rare indeed, caused American Dad to boot out the excellent, smart comedy of Arrested Development, cutting Arrested's episode order from 22 to 18. Clearly, MacFarlane has created a monster. Well, another monster.