American Dad

Small Screen Specials, Series and Direct-To-Video
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Post by PatrickvD » May 25th, 2007, 8:33 am

American Dad is simply brilliant. I loved last sunday's episode. Stan and Roger being completley high was so funny.

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Post by PatrickvD » October 14th, 2008, 8:59 am

Have more people warmed up to American Dad in the last year at all?

It totally took the lead over Family Guy. The writing in AD is great. The season premiere with Steve hitting puberty was hilarious. Especially the Forrest Gump/16 candles-esque ending. So funny.

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Post by Daniel » October 14th, 2008, 8:34 pm

Unfortunately, no. :( I love how they changed the theme song, though. I think it's an improvement.

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Re: American Dad

Post by PatrickvD » May 27th, 2010, 6:51 pm

still no one?

I'm pretty sure the general consensus now is that American Dad is far superior to Family Guy in every way imaginable.

The Rapture episode was crazy awesome and what about Tearjerker? Best James Bond parody ever in my opinion. American Dad is TV's best kept secret and I'm glad it was renewed for a sixth season.

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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » January 28th, 2011, 1:03 am

Anyone know if the new time slot is going to hurt this show at all? I would hate to see the series get cancelled. Especially since it's still really funny.
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Post by Bill1978 » January 28th, 2011, 3:33 am

I find it wierd that I can't stand Family Guy but loved American Dad after one episode. Loved it that I went out and bought the DVDs. The shows have similar character types but yet there is something about American Dad that makes me laugh. Maybe it's because there is a story for every episode as opposed to Family Guy's lots of send up gags to disguise a lack of a coherent story.

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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » January 30th, 2011, 3:07 pm

I'm kinda the same way, Bill, as it took me a while to even warm to "Family Guy" at all, but I also became an "American Dad" fan after seeing just one episode.

I think that the characters are just plain stronger and funnier than those of FG, which leads to much better comedy. Let's face it: Peter Griffin is essentially a Homer Simpson clone, with the only difference being that he's even fatter and stupider than he is. Like those two, Stan is clueless, but he doesn't think he's clueless. Peter and Homer are perfectly content being dumb while Stan is convinced that he's always right and knows the way that things should be done.

Granted, American Dad obviously doesn't have Stewie, but Roger and Klaus are almost as good, and sometimes even better. And for whatever reason, I think Francine is a lot funnier than Lois, maybe because Francine is a more consistent character overall (really, the writers can't seem to decide if Lois is supposed to be smart or ditzy). And I think it goes without saying that Hayley is a much stronger character than Meg (the whole "Meg sucks just because she's Meg" thing has gotten a little old now, thank you very much).

Bottom line, I check out "Family Guy" every now and again just to see what's funny. I love "American Dad" because it is funny.
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dusterian » February 17th, 2011, 3:10 pm

I like Amercian Dad better than Family Guy now, except sometimes Stewie and Brian can't be beat. But the alien Roger is my new favorite, and I like pretty much the whole cast overall more than Family Guy's. They really are funnier, there's actually some kind of innocence to them and something that makes them feel like they really are characters. I think it's that consistency some people mentioned.

But I feel bad for liking either of these shows. They are basically all making fun and light of the awful. There's a lot of shock value and humour that is so bad it goes beyond the term "dark humor". It's really offensive, it's worse than a guilty pleasure, it's like I laugh but feel terrible for doing it at the same time.

The creator of the show, Seth McFarlane, even once said on a talk show that some things were seen as "okay" because they have catchy, nice songs. I feel both shows feel good and "okay" because they have brightly colored cartoon characters and an upbeat tone.

I just wonder, where will it go from here as American keeps laughing at the offensive and making fun of the worst stuff we can think of?

Not to mention that Seth may be pushing an agenda. It's strange that he puts issues of feminism in his shows but on both shows, the woman is a housewife and doesn't try to be anything else and succeed at it so that in the next show she's not a housewife. And with both Meg and Hayley, they try to do things but get shot down by their fathers (or everyone else) who think they're wrong, so that they never end up proving a point to their fathers or others around them or really exceeding at the feminist things they try to do. They get shot down or told to shut up.

And of course the interview on here with Seth said he was an atheist and that nothing was sacred. There's a huge problem with nothing being sacred, it means that not even love or good things that mean something to every part of humanity are considered sacred enough to not be made fun of or get torn apart by the show. And in the episode where Brian (the mouthpiece of Seth McFarlane who sings like him and sounds like him and is made to be the rightest one on the show) admits he's atheist, at the end Meg says he's right (so Meg doesn't even get to hold her own ideas there, either) and the show preaches that it's right, even though Seth said that he didn't have an agenda on atheism to push (I can't find the interview to get the exact quote) and yet he's been pushing it more and more on his show, with that episode finally trying to do a conversion of its audience. And recent episodes are still pushing it. He can have his views...but where's the alternate views, for why believing in things such as God are okay or good, too? I mean at least talk about the possibility of it. It's one-sided. So it's not a show that's going to treat everything equally or fairly after all.

Well, I had to get all that off my chest.
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » February 17th, 2011, 5:15 pm

And with both Meg and Hayley, they try to do things but get shot down by their fathers (or everyone else) who think they're wrong, so that they never end up proving a point to their fathers or others around them or really exceeding at the feminist things they try to do.
Given that Seth rather clearly leans left politically, I'd say that he's on Hayley's side, oh, 99.9% of the time. ;)

The joke about Stan is that he is ultra conservative, but every time he says something politically, the show is usually saying the opposite of what he's saying. So of course he won't agree with Hayley (but he does obviously love her, and has every once in a while almost seen things from her perspective, such as in "Stannie Get Your Gun"). But that doesn't mean that the show is saying that Hayley is wrong.

To be fair, I don't really think that he's doing that with Meg either, although the scripts are so cruel to her character that I can't provide quite the same line of defense here. But Peter's stupid. Quagmire's a pervert. Brian is a chain smoker. Clearly, none of the FG characters are meant to be seen as role models.

As I've said before, I have not seen that much FG, so I can't really judge it all that much. But "American Dad!" is so well written and so consistently funny that I'm willing to forgive it more, I guess. Heck, even the really tasteless gags are actually quite funny the majority of the time. For every false step the show does sometimes make (the plothole ridden cutaway gag that implied that Hayley once had a twin brother made no sense), it then goes on to make ten more steps in the right direction. It might not be the sort of thing that I'd want to watch with my mother, but in terms of feeling "ashamed," I feel very little if any guilt for being an "American Dad!" fan.
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dusterian » February 21st, 2011, 4:38 pm

Well being a liberal doesn't mean all liberals are the same or for the same things.

All the men on all the shows are misogynistic. Even Brian, who's supposed to be the most caring about women's rights, tries to get Louis to show him her private parts and still rags on Meg like the others right after he says positive things to her, and he still prefers dumb pretty girls. Even female characters are mysgonistic. In the muder mystery episode with the female reporter as the murderer, Louis says, "Why do I even bother being friends with other women?"

I guess good writing and funny lines are more important than what the writing and humor are about/making fun of? More important than morality or making light of the worst things imaginable? Shock value is the only way we get our laughs these days...? What's happened to us...?

I did want to ask though, what did you mean by whether Louis was smart or ditzy? Out of all things I don't remember seeing her be ditzy.
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » February 26th, 2011, 6:53 pm

Well being a liberal doesn't mean all liberals are the same or for the same things.
Huh? What does that have to do with anything that I said?

It's called "satire," Dust. As I said in a post above, just because the characters say something doesn't mean that the show itself is saying it. If Stan is disrespectful of others, it's because it's in his personality for him to be that. Not because the show itself is saying that feminism is wrong.

And "adult humor" is nothing new for animated shows. "South Park" is more than a decade old now, and it's much meaner than AD ever is.

Again, every once in a while, a joke on the show misses the mark and just seems tasteless. But for the most part, AD works for me. Now, granted, I haven't seen every episode of the show, but from what I have seen, I have yet to watch a stinker. And if you don't like it, then don't watch it. Simple as that.

As for the Lois thing...maybe "ditz" was the wrong word to use. I actually had a very specific example in mind when I said that...but I now totally forget what it was. Sorry. ;)
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Post by Dusterian » March 20th, 2011, 10:02 pm

I don't consider a show being awful and having jokes that are morally awful the same thing. Of course the show isn't a stinker, because it makes us laugh...just at the worst possible things we could laugh at. Okay, perhaps not the very worst possible, but second worst. But just because you didn't kill someone doesn't mean robbing a bank is forgivable.

I also said to my mom, who actually watches the show with me sometimes, that I thought Family Guy and American Dad were worse than South Park. She agreed it just might be.

There's even something about South Park's less realistic animation that makes things a little less awful, but what they make fun of and how they make fun of it is also less abhorrent.
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » March 20th, 2011, 11:45 pm

But just because you didn't kill someone doesn't mean robbing a bank isn't also forgivable.
I'm not trying to make fun of you here: I am honestly lost by this one.

Again, this is all about personal tastes (but really, how on earth is AD "worse" than South Park? They used to famously kill a kid on every episode of that show).For instance, some people are going to see the episode "Rapture's Delight" and get deeply offended. And there are others, like me, who thought it was a completely brilliant parody of post-apocalypse movies.

I could go on, but there probably wouldn't be a point. I think I've gotten what I'm trying to say here across.
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Post by Dusterian » March 21st, 2011, 11:58 pm

Oh, I wrote that wrong. I meant that even though robbing a bank is not as bad as killing someone, it still isn't forgivable. So I meant even if American Dad isn't making fun of the worst things we can possibly thing of, it's still close, and still bad.

If only they would cut some of those so bad jokes, and just have the less offensive, making-light-of-terrible-issues jokes. They have a lot of jokes that are like that.

The worst thing on South Park was when they kept kicking a baby. There is a difference between a running joke of a main character dying all the time on South Park and things like making fun of abortion and dead babies and 9/11 on American Dad and Family Guy. "Hehehehehe, must've been a woman pilot" says Peter. I can't believe they do things like that...
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Re: American Dad

Post by Dacey » March 26th, 2011, 6:01 pm

Oh, I wrote that wrong. I meant that even though robbing a bank is as bad as killing someone, it still isn't forgivable.
Still totally lost here.

Context is everything. Many of the jokes on "American Dad!" might sound just bad when you hear about them, but when you see them in the actual show, they're hilarious. Heck, they even made cannibalism funny in one episode.

And the point of satire is often to make light of sometimes serious subject matters, while at the same time often providing some form of social commentary about them. The real culprit on this matter is "Family Guy" (which you keep bringing up for some reason), which just throws the gags in there from nowhere and often with no purpose but for the audience to say "I can't believe they just did that."

Also, Seth MacFarlene isn't even that involved with "American Dad!" anymore. Apart from voicing Stan and Roger (and doing a fantastic job with that), he's so busy with other stuff that he really lets others take care of the show for him. So if you're thinking this is all "his commentary," that's not the case.

But anyway, I'll stop here. I'll start sounding like a broken record in this topic if I'm not careful. ;)

Btw, "American Dad!" moves back to its 9:30 timeslot tomorrow night for its new episode. The rumor going around is that Fox was intentionally setting it up for failure by moving it in the first place so that they could cancel it later, but obviously that didn't happen as it's been greenlit for another season. My guess is that even though ratings have been down, the show still has a dependable fan base, which is more than can be said about "Bob's Burgers," which I'm expecting to go out of business soon.
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