American Dad
I used to really love American Dad. I hate Family Guy, but I love American Dad…it actually tried to have a point sometimes, which was nice. And I liked the characters. But now I’ve just finished Series Six, and I don’t really like it anymore. Not the way I used to…
The episode “White Rice” kind of did it for me. In addition to the racism…it starts with the concept that Stan has been wiping Francine’s mind every year, without her consent, so she won’t bring up anything he doesn’t want to talk about. That’s disturbing enough on its own, but when Francine’s memories come back there’s a brief flashback scene of Francine and Stan with baby Hayley and another baby her age. Francine says “Should we get Hayley and Bailey vaccinated?” and Stan says “I’ll think about it.” (Or something along those lines.) And obviously Hayley has no twin that we know of, so, um…
…Stan didn’t vaccinate one of his children, the baby died, and he wiped his wife’s memory of it? That’s WAY OFF the disturb-o-meter. And it’s not mentioned again, not by Francine or anyone, it’s just a throwaway joke. A really disturbing throwaway joke. And it’s actually managed to put me off the entire show, sigh.
That, the increased number of fart/vomit/animal-killing jokes, and the increasing streak of misogyny (girls are only worth something if they’re pretty and sometimes not even then) has kind of…made me hate it a bit. I still like the old episodes, but, yeah. Sigh.
June 22, 2012 @ 3:08 pm
I am with you there.