American Dad! (2005– )

The random escapades of Stan Smith, an extreme right wing CIA agent dealing with family life and keeping America safe, all in the most absurd way possible.

Creators:

Mike Barker, Seth MacFarlane, Matt Weitzman

Stars:

Seth MacFarlane, Wendy Schaal, Dee Bradley Baker

Nominated for 2 Primetime Emmys. Another 14 nominations.

Cast

Series cast summary:
Seth MacFarlane	...	Stan Smith (149 episodes, 2005-2013)
Wendy Schaal	...	Francine Smith (149 episodes, 2005-2013)
Dee Bradley Baker	...	Klaus (149 episodes, 2005-2013)
Scott Grimes	...	Steve Smith (148 episodes, 2005-2013)
Rachael MacFarlane	...	Hayley Smith (148 episodes, 2005-2013)
Mike Barker	...	Terry Bates (79 episodes, 2005-2013)

Storyline

Stan Smith, who works for the CIA and is constantly on the alert for terrorist activity. Stan will go to extremes to protect his beloved America from harm; as evidenced by the terror-alert color code on his fridge, and his frequent knee-jerk reaction of shooting holes in the toaster whenever the toast pops up. In addition to Stan's wife and teenage children, the Smith household has two rather unconventional members. There's Roger, the sarcastic space alien who rescued Stan from Area 51 who deeply resents the fact that he's not allowed to leave the house, and therefore, has been reduced to drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, and Klaus, a lascivious, German-speaking goldfish; the result of a CIA experiment gone seriously wrong where the CIA tried to give a fish a German man's brain. Stan's son is a dorky teenager who tries to be cool. His wife has had a past life of sex and drugs.

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Plot Keywords:

cia | goldfish | german | alien | cia agent | 

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Taglines:

From the creator of "Family Guy" comes a man who will stop at nothing to protect his country.

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Genres:

Animation | Comedy

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Certificate:

TV-PG

Details

Official Sites:

Fox

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

6 February 2005 (USA)

Also Known As:

American Dad

Company Credits

Production Co:

20th Century Fox Television, Atlantic Creative, Fuzzy Door Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

22 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The final frame of the introduction was changed for seasons beyond the first. At the end of the credits in the first season, all that could be seen was a big "American Dad!" logo in front of the American Flag. In all subsequent scenes, this logo was shrunk to fit the names to the series creators on the same screen.

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Goofs

In one episode Toshi marries the Russian mail order bride. Yet he claimed in an earlier episode he had an arranged marriage waiting for him in his homeland.

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Quotes

Newspaper Headline: President finally gets joke about his last name.

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Crazy Credits

Up to and including the 2007-2008 season, each episode would include a different Langley Falls Gazette headline, each of which was comical and satirical (examples include "President finally gets joke about last name" and "Israel pulls out of Gaza, Gaza not pregnant."

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Connections

Referenced in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #20.21 (2011)

User Reviews

Is to Family Guy what Futurama is to the Simpsons

On first glance, American Dad looks like a carbon copy of Seth MacFarlane's "other" show Family Guy. The animation is near identical, the lead character Stan Smith's knuckle headed optimism and in-your-face presentation doesn't so much recall Peter Griffin as grab you by the throat and scream in your face and Roger the alien and Klaus the goldfish work in much the same way Stewie and Brian do in the previous show. So far so very familiar, as though MacFarlane dressed up his fourth FG series with different characters when it was initially cancelled so as to stay on the air but stick with it, and American Dad will eventually reveal itself as a superior cartoon to it's predecessor.

Sure, the humour is once again a mixture of insightful witticisms, biting satire and odd bursts into toilet humour but rather than the chaos of Family Guy where the plot seems to revolve round the jokes, here the opposite is true. The flashbacks are almost totally absent and instead each episode features a structure and character development that is normally missing from the first show. Okay some of the episodes fall a bit flat but nevertheless, there are considerably more hits than there are misses and when it's good, it's brilliant. "A Smith In The Hand" for example is in this writer's humble opinion, the funniest thing MacFarlane and his team have ever produced.

What's more, American Dad is considerably more politically-orientated and everything you could conceive about the USA's current state of fear mongering and distrust is put beneath a microscope and parodied mercilessly. Stan Smith is a boorish depiction of all that paranoia rolled into one and some of his outbursts and overreactions are hilarious. Take the scene where he locks up his new Arab neighbours in his back garden for instance in a moment that scarily recalls the nightmarish conditions of Guantanamo bay yet still manages to be side splittingly funny or any of his numerous conceited one-liners ("only women have emotions son, they come from their ovaries").

Only time will tell if American Dad can outlive the shadow of it's far more successful big brother, but like the relationship between Futurama and the Simpsons beforehand, it's often a far funnier and considerably more focused show that deserves a wider audience. Highly recommended.