American Dad

Anyone watching American Dad?

Just caught the November 20th episode, Virtual In-Stanity, on dvr and laughed my ass off. It takes a lot...a whole lot...to get me to laugh that hard. Loved the way they spoofed AVATAR, then brought it all home by connecting it to ALIENS. Plus, the whole bit with Roger going on a killing spree as a wronged chauffeur...had shades of CARRIE, FINAL DESTINATION, and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE all mixed in.

Please tell me others are watching this show. Please! Someone?

I watch it sometimes if its on. Its okay - not my favourite.

The best thing that can be said for AMERICAN DAD is that it's the least painful of the Seth MacFarlane shows.

Harmsway wrote:

The best thing that can be said for AMERICAN DAD is that it's the least painful of the Seth MacFarlane shows.

I guess that's a compliment. Too bad FAMILY GUY came out first, because I think if AMERICAN DAD had been his first show, people might be talking about how genius it is and how bad FG is. I can't really take FAMILY GUY because it always feels like a show that is stitched together with random jokes. At least with American Dad there is a plot and a theme and a thread that runs throughout each episode.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Anyone watching American Dad?

Just caught the November 20th episode, Virtual In-Stanity, on dvr and laughed my ass off. It takes a lot...a whole lot...to get me to laugh that hard. Loved the way they spoofed AVATAR, then brought it all home by connecting it to ALIENS. Plus, the whole bit with Roger going on a killing spree as a wronged chauffeur...had shades of CARRIE, FINAL DESTINATION, and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE all mixed in.

Please tell me others are watching this show. Please! Someone?

Never seen it. But does sound worth watching especially if it spoofs Avatar. Does American Dad, actually have a family, you know with a wife and kids, as opposed to the absentee dads,or dad who drops by occasionally, or who-needs-a-dad single-mother families, or two-dad families, that Hollywood insists on serving up these days.

Harmsway wrote:

The best thing that can be said for AMERICAN DAD is that it's the least painful of the Seth MacFarlane shows.

Hmm... by a hair.

Any time I accidentally flick over to another MacFarlane show I last about 5 seconds before bellowing an expletive and turning the TV off completely, but with American Dad it's more like 6 seconds.

The only thing by the guy that I really like is the intro that he sung for Into the Wild Green Yonder, although it's much too witty for him to have written it.

I guess the gay alien in American Dad is kinda funny.

tiffanywint wrote:

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Anyone watching American Dad?

Just caught the November 20th episode, Virtual In-Stanity, on dvr and laughed my ass off. It takes a lot...a whole lot...to get me to laugh that hard. Loved the way they spoofed AVATAR, then brought it all home by connecting it to ALIENS. Plus, the whole bit with Roger going on a killing spree as a wronged chauffeur...had shades of CARRIE, FINAL DESTINATION, and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE all mixed in.

Please tell me others are watching this show. Please! Someone?

Never seen it. But does sound worth watching especially if it spoofs Avatar. Does American Dad, actually have a family, you know with a wife and kids, as opposed to the absentee dads,or dad who drops by occasionally, or who-needs-a-dad single-mother families, or two-dad families, that Hollywood insists on serving up these days.

I've been watching the series since day one (have every available season on dvd).

It does have an actual family. Stan Smith is a CIA operative. He has a wife (Francine, who was a slut back in the 80's), a liberal hippy chick daughter named Haley, and an awkward, shy son named Steve. Additionally, they have a goldfish named Klaus (who was an East German spy back in the 80's before his brain was implanted in a goldfish....trust me, it works) and a space alien named Roger that Stan recovered from Area 51.

I love all the characters in the show, but it's Roger that is the star. He's like E.T. if E.T. were a thieving, bisexual, alcoholic, drug addict with homicidal tendencies. If Roger is discovered in the Smith house, Stan could lose his job and get in trouble, so Roger is *supposed* to stay inside and never leave the house. However, he never does what he's told, and in order to get around the rules, Roger usually puts on some sort of disguise and employs a fake accent in order to fool the general public.

I am essentially the demographic that AMERICAN DAD likes to mock: conservative, religious....and I might be offended with the show (and occasionally I think it goes too far) if it weren't so funny.

The show also manages to go places a lot of other comedies wouldn't dare. For example, I kept waiting for Roger's limousine killing spree to be revealed as some sort of dream at the very end, but to McFarlane's credit they didn't wimp out and make it all a dream. In the show Roger starts up a chauffeur service with a limousine that he stole. When 5 frat guys stiff him on the fare, Roger gets revenge by methodically tracking them down and running them over. I think they were parodying FINAL DESTINATION, and CARRIE, but clearly the last scene in the show was a spoof of THE TWILIGHT ZONE MOVIE (in the scene the last frat guy is on a commercial airplane trying to escape when he looks out the window and sees Roger and the limousine on the wing of the plane; Roger presses the gas pedal, crashes into the side of the plane in order to kill the frat guy, and ends up taking the whole plane down).

I find people either love AMERICAN DAD or hate it, and I haven't found anyone who loves both FAMILY GUY and AMERICAN DAD. People seem to like one or the other (I haven't really even checked out THE CLEVELAND SHOW yet).

The show goes to some dark places. It mines comedy out of horrific, ugly, dark, and tragic situations. It won't be everyone's cup of tea.

However, I knew I was hooked when this line from Roger managed to get past the censors in the second episode of the first season: (Roger on the phone with a friend and talking about Francine): "Tams, I gotta go. Yeah, the boss is being a real Catch U Next Tuesday."

Great summary. I'll have to check it out.

btw any time Family Guy has come on, I've turned it off including tonight as I wait for the Survivor Season finale. Actually I've got if on, but with the sound muted, so I don't miss the start of Survivor, which appears to have been pushed back due to a late-running football game.

I love it when it's firing on all cylinders. Its a more solid ensemble than Family Guy and the writing is far more consistent. (Chris and Meg are boring. Especially Chris. Writers take note.) I think the only episode I truly haven't cared for in the slightest was the one with Cee Lo Green and the hot tub. Just as well it didn't wind up being the finale because it would've irritated me to hell.

And word on Roger. My favourite episodes tend to involve him in some significant way. "Camp Refoogee" where he and Francine pretend to be a married couple while the others are away and wind up in the massive fight establishing the couple they're role-playing as. 'Tell them how you killed our baby'. "Tears of a Clooney" where he adopts the foster children to get them to make wine in the swimming pool and plenty of others.

I think "Stans Night Out" probably rates a mention amongst my favourites too.

Don't waste your time with The Cleveland Show, GS, I was entirely for it in concept but it's basically Family Guy without any of the bite. The moment they white-washed (pardon the expression) the pilot by replacing a lyric referring to race in the theme tune I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere.

Vesper wrote:

And word on Roger. My favourite episodes tend to involve him in some significant way. "Camp Refoogee" where he and Francine pretend to be a married couple while the others are away and wind up in the massive fight establishing the couple they're role-playing as. 'Tell them how you killed our baby'. "Tears of a Clooney" where he adopts the foster children to get them to make wine in the swimming pool and plenty of others.

I think "Stans Night Out" probably rates a mention amongst my favourites too.

Don't waste your time with The Cleveland Show, GS, I was entirely for it in concept but it's basically Family Guy without any of the bite. The moment they white-washed (pardon the expression) the pilot by replacing a lyric referring to race in the theme tune I knew it wasn't going to go anywhere.

One of the stand out episodes for me was "Lincoln Lover", the episode where Stan does his own stage play of Abraham Lincoln; a sort of spoof of THE BODYGUARD. At first the play doesn't go over very well, but soon gay audiences are picking up on the homoerotic subtext of the play that Stan didn't mean to include, and the play becomes a huge hit.

Some could say that Stan is the typical archetype father role these days: overbearing, loud, stupid, clumsy, and in need of his wife to correct him and make things right. And for the most part you'd be right. We've seen this kind of relationship before on both The Simpsons (Homer is balanced out by Marge) South Park (Randy is balanced out by Sharon), and Family Guy (Peter is balanced out by Lois). But the thing about Stan is that he goes through a process each episode where he usually learns a valuable lesson and makes changes to better himself and his family.

When I first caught AMERICAN DAD on tv (purely by accident), I immediately "got" the Roger character. I'm just old enough to remember Paul Lynde from Hollywood Squares, and I could tell that that was who was being channeled in the Roger character. The voice work by Seth McFarlane is spot-on. It totally drives the character of Roger and makes him the funniest on the show.

Also, kudos to any show that figures out a way to utilize the talents of Wendy Schaal, one of our finest B-film actresses from the 1980's.

On the flip side....I watched 15 minutes of ALLEN GREGORY two weeks ago and turned the damn thing off. Normally I'll try and ride out a movie or a tv episode in order to be fair to it, but AG was just bad in every way a show could be bad. The animation does nothing for me, but Jonah Hill's voice is unforgivable as the title character. AG is about a 7 year old boy who is an outcast in elementary school because he is a snob, drinks fine wines, is an elitist, etc.....yet Hill's voice just doesn't' match the character. It's a total miscasting of voice talent. Hill ruins what I though, on paper at least, looked to be a really great comedy. The last time I can remember one character so thoroughly ruining a movie or television show as Jar Jar Binks in THE PHANTOM MENACE. That's how awful Hill is in this role.

Awful episode last Sunday. I've only seen one very funny episode this season. The rest have been pure crap. Maybe it IS time to let the series go and just remember the good times and what we once had. No sense in stretching this series out any further.

Rumors are that the show may get cancelled. Shame, really. I'll miss Roger's crazy outfits and drunken slurs and pan-sexual encounters with humans.