It’s not a surprise that Seth MacFarlane is less culturally relevant than a decade ago, given that there was a brief moment in which he was at the center of the entertainment ecosystem. MacFarlane directed one of the highest-grossing R-Rated movies of all-time with Ted, hosted the Academy Awards, produced a reboot of Cosmos, created an original live-action science fiction show in The Orville, and began recording a series of easy-listening studio albums in a three-year span when Family Guy was still one of the biggest shows on television. Family Guy never had the originality of The Simpsons or South Park, but there was a notable difference between MacFarlane’s adolescent irreverence and the more calculated chaos within the seasons he was less involved in.
MacFarlane’s has always done as much as he can within a given medium before moving on to something else. The controversial 2013 Oscars were the last time he hosted an awards show, and he gave up directing features after A Million Ways To Die in the West flopped and Ted 2 underperformed. The Orville is in a seemingly permanent stage of hiatus, and other announced projects like a Family Guy film, a Flintstones reboot, and an original Broadway musical never materialized. It’s not as if MacFarlane isn’t busy; providing the voice for a season of Family Guy alone every year would be enough on his plate, even if he wasn’t also behind an self-explanatory album titled Seth MacFarlane Sings the Muppets.
The funniest aspect of MacFarlane being considered an “elder statesman” of Hollywood, even if he’s only 52, is that the moral panic over his sense-of-humor has completely dissipated since the days in which Family Guy would regularly spark backlash. Within the comedy world alone, MacFarlane isn’t as transgressive as South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or a perpetual pain-in-the-ass like Ricky Gervais. His humor is often blue, but never hateful; MacFarlane’s a a square who loves The Sound of Music, Frank Sinatra, and Monty Python, and Family Guy just happened to be the one project that became a runaway success.
Compared to Family Guy, American Dad! was never a big deal for MacFarlane, nor was it expected to be anything but a clone. American Dad! was spun out of MacFarlane and co-creator Matt Weitzmans’ ideas for a slightly more politically-tinged angle for Family Guy that replaced the blue-collar Griffin family with upper middle-class counterparts in the Smiths, who the duo saw as the embodiment of George W. Bush’s voting base. The Smiths were designed to represent the prototypical nuclear family with the FBI Agent Stan, his breadwinner wife Francine, their hippie college-aged daughter Hayley, and geeky son Stan. The element of chaos is the alien Roger, a disguise-wearing, androgynous extrovert who filled the same surrealist role of Family Guy’s baby Stewie and dog Brian. Although MacFarlane voiced half the main characters in Family Guy, he’s only primarily responsible for Stan and Roger on American Dad!
It’s not uncommon for comedy shows to move past a wonky first season, but it’s unusual for animated programs to avoid repetition after such a lengthy time on air. If American Dad! was intended to be a slightly more supernatural version of Family Guy made for the Bush era, it evolved into a commentary on absurdism within the last two decades of American history. That MacFarlane isn’t on the writing staff is a sneaky virtue, given that his sensibilities gravitate towards cutaway gags that thrive on unpredictability. It’s an asset that has given Family Guy a second life through memes and viral social clips, but the individual episode narratives are excuses to string together jokes. MacFarlane is likely too busy to take the time to develop a cohesive character arc, even if Ted proved he was capable of it. That doesn’t make him unessential to American Dad!, though, because his ability to create such eccentric personalities for Stan and Roger has given the animators something to base their work around.
American Dad!’s other sneaky conceit is that its relevance to popular culture is limited, and confined to broad topics. One of the show’s best episodes is the James Bond parody “Tearjerker,” but references to the cliches within a 007 movie register for anyone. Another gem was the experimental black-and-white episode “Rabbit Ears,” which is successful as a retro surrealist odyssey, even for those who’ve never seen an episode of The Twilight Zone. This might have initially been an effort to differentiate American Dad! from Family Guy, which is overly reliant on its jabs at celebrities as versatile as Sarah Palin and Dan Rather to Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds.
The evolution of American Dad! is fascinating because it has developed its characters, but not attempted to leer at headlines. The production cycle of animation has ensured that any show that isn’t South Park will be several months behind the news cycle. Even if every show will eventually become dated by factors that are beyond its control, the loose timeline of American Dad! isn’t as distracting as the now-contradictory flashbacks in The Simpsons, which point to a different decade in which Homer and Marge first met.
The drawback is that American Dad! has operated on such a consistent level that it’s more obvious when it falls flat. Season 22 consisted of a batch of episodes that could’ve been leftovers from other seasons; even if there was a satirical edge, attacking a niche trend with complete sincerity is predictable.