Seth MacFarlane's animated series "American Dad!" has made it to six seasons and almost one hundred episodes and yet has never found a way to escape the enormous shadow of "Family Guy."
Watching an episode of "American Dad!" often feels like watching all the rejected jokes and gags from "Family Guy," spun around a loose and often pointless plot. The characters themselves have little personality of their own and are simply mouthpieces for B-grade jokes.
The season premiere opens with a promise from Roger (MacFarlane), a talking, vulgar alien, that the episode will feature 100 deaths. A "death count" subsequently stays in the bottom right corner of the screen; the gimmick ends rather lamely, making the viewer wonder how the show could be nearing its 100th episode, considering how little effort seems to be put into the whole thing.
Many of the gags — which rarely connect with what is happening in the respective scenes — are obscure and outdated, especially for the show's target audience. The show mostly targets young men, many with the maturity level of a five-year- old, yet it parodies everything from the old "Superman" movies to "Good Will Hunting" (1997) and "Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang" (1968) — as if these are hip and relevant films to joke about today.
The season premiere brings back a lot of older gags that at one time may have worked but now just feel overused. It's as though the writers are so out of ideas that they're just fishing for anything that might have gotten a laugh before.
This tendency is most apparent in Roger and Steve's alternate personas, Wheels and the Legman. Wheels and the Legman make up a crime-solving duo — one of them is in a wheelchair — that seems to be parodying the type of cop dramas that stopped being popular years ago.
The parallels to "Family Guy" are overwhelming. Stan (MacFarlane), the patriarch of the family, performs the same dim-witted and naive antics as Peter does on "Family Guy," the show utilizes throwaway jokes in the same manner, and even the artwork is indistinguishable between the two shows.
But at least "Family Guy" hits the mark on most of its jokes, something "American Dad!" should aspire to do.
"American Dad!" also fails because it tries to project itself as political satire, as Stan is a hardcore conservative, his daughter is an extreme liberal and the show often portrays political figures as characters, such as President George H. W. Bush in many appearances. But the show has nothing to actually say about politics.
Tired stereotypes are flung around instead, like the idea that all Republicans are crazy about guns and that a liberal is the equivalent of a tree-hugging hippie. These kinds of uncreative ideas make the viewer feel like they have seen everything "American Dad!" does countless times on countless other mediocre shows before.
Even though "American Dad!" is nearing its 100th episode, it is still a forgettable show that has only survived by riding on the coattails of its more successful counterpart. It is a knockoff that does little to make the audience laugh or even care.
