Why American Dad is ultimately superior to Family Guy.

The adult animation industry has managed to garner itself a rather controversial reputation in recent years. With The Simpsons mindlessly pumping out season after season, the internets strange obsession with and following hatred of Rick and Morty, and Family Guys reputation of having some of the worst humour on Television, it is easy to understand why many people are hesitant to delve into the world of animation.

American Dad has always lived in the shadow of it’s far more successful predecessor, Family Guy. At face value, it’s incredibly simple to understand why. Both programs are built to parody and subvert the common American Family trope that dominated the mid 1900’s. Though each show depicts a similar cast of characters in appearance, and both display similar styles humour, there is one major factor that truly separates these programs from one another.

American Dads characters actually feel like real characters.

Despite similar appearances, American Dads brilliant array of characters are overflowing with personality in a way that the Family Guy characters aren’t. When combined with the manner in which these characters interact with one another, it results in a cast you genuinely care about.

This can be easily shown when comparing the lead characters of each show: Stan Smith and Peter Griffin.

Right off the bat, the first thing to know about Stan Smith is that he is highly conservative and tightly wound. Like the idealistic families that dominated the early years of television, Stan has an expectation of what the average American family should look like, including his own. This immediately creates a variety of possible conflicts and dramas as his view of the world clashes with those of the other members of his family.

This is primarily reflected in his relationship with his son Steve - whose flamboyant and childish traits fail to represent what Stan thinks a successful man should be. This dynamic is opposed by Steve’s relationship with his mother, Francine.

Francine babies her youngest child, wanting him to be able to express himself properly and remain her baby boy for as long as possible. These parenting styles are best represented in Season Two, Episode Six: “Son of Stan”.

The A plot of the episode revolves around a parenting conflict between Stan and Francine which results in the former creating a clone of Steve so that each can try raising their son in the manner they think is best.

The way this scenario plays out is rather interesting. Stan grinds his version of Steve to the bone, forcing him into sports and AP classes which he does excel in. However the strict regimen Stan imposed on his son eventually results in the boy snapping and turning violent as a result of a loveless upbringing.

Francine, on the other hand, spoils her version of Steve and shelters him from the world. He allows her to walk all over him, resulting in a spoilt and lazy child that has no respect for authority and expects the world to fall at his feet.

This plot isn’t anything groundbreaking, but I think it does an amazing job at displaying the relationship between these three characters and how their personalities and upbringings influence their decision making.

Compare this example to the life of Peter Griffin. His entire personality can be boiled down to a small number of traits:

He is stupid.

He is a drunk.

He is a terrible father and husband.

This results in not a character but a vessel in which the writers can tell jokes through. This can easily work on a small scale, but with Family Guy having been on the air for so long, it is hard to ignore the lack of development and care put into Peter Griffins character. Analysing his relationship with his son Chris is also a difficult task, for as lacking as Peter is in personality, he is nowhere near as bland as Chris Griffin.

American Dad is able to create such interesting stories about the relationships between it’s characters because they are all established people. Family Guy fails to create equally interesting plots because after so many years, the writers are still working with blank slates.

Though most of the Family Guy cast maintained the minimal traits that they began with, it is wrong to ignore the development of the shows two most popular characters: Brian and Stewie Griffin.

Beggining with the former, Brian started the show as the families ‘straight man’. He was intelligent, witty, and effortlessly supported Peter’s less than rational thinking process. Choosing to have the family dog be the most rational member of the Griffin family is a smart concept, however as the show progressed this early version of Brian Griffin slowly transformed into a parody of himself.

What was once a witty and intelligent dog became an arrogant and socially oblivious lowlife who continuously makes the worst possible decision at every turn.

The writers openly admit the downfall of their once most popular character in Season Eight, Episode Seven: “Jerome is the new Black.”

This episodes B plot involves Brian trying to win the favour of Quagmire, who has an open dislike of the dog, and tricks him into a dinner date with him in order to make ammends. In one of the greatest roasts in animated history, Quagmire obliterates Brian by stating out loud each and every single thing wrong with his character. I cannot do the scene justice in writing, and recommend you search for the scene online yourself.

The only progression Family Guy sees for its characters is a continuous downward spiral that they cannot seem to break free of - with a singular exception.

Stewie is by far the most developed character in Family Guy. For some perplexing reason he is the most layered of the cast, though I would attribute part of this to his status as the families baby. This creates a layer of innocence that compliments his hyper intelligence quite nicely. Unfortunately, the writers mostly use his character for plot conveniences, his inventions allowing for some of the shows best episode concepts.

I believe that Roger from American Dad succeeds where Brian Griffin fails and does a better job at accomplishing what Stewie does best. He is the most outlandish character in the story - but the role he plays within the family fits incredibly well with the already established dynamics.

Roger is an alien that was once being hunted by the CIA. The agent that first found him was none other than Stan Smith. After Roger saved his life, the rigid obeyer of the law chose to disobey his orders. He hid Roger’s whereabouts from the government and took the alien into his home, in the end treating him with the same distant love that he holds for his children.

Roger embodies the nihilistic and arrogance that Brian exudes, but these traits are mixed with his own hyper intelligence which he uses to both help and hinder his family. By choosing to make Roger an outsider to the family rather than a baby, the writers are able to create a slew of interesting character dynamics, which is brilliantly displayed in Season Six, Episode Eighteen: “Great Space Roaster.”

For his birthday, Roger requests the family hold a roast in his honor. However due to his own emotional instability and lack of confidence in his place in the family, he ends up taking great offence to the insults the rest of the family threw at him.

Deeply hurt, Roger goes out of his way to try and kill the family, but after failing a few times, he instead attempts to make them feel as bad as he felt during that roast. He kidnaps Stan, Francine, Steve, and Hayley and forces them to roast each other, and once they have verbally torn each other to shreds, the Smiths simply begin to laugh.

When Roger questions their reaction, Stan explains that they feel okay joking about these things because they’re family. They know that at the end of the day, these people love them, flaws and all.

Francine realises that Roger doesn’t truly feel like a member of the family, and the episode ends with the alien feeling a little more loved than he had felt before.

American Dad has absurd and outlandish stories, there is no question, but at each episodes core is a relationship tale between two or more of the characters. As Stan stated before, at the end of the day they are family and they love each other. This is important to remember, especially when viewing the heated rivalry between Stan and his daughter Hayley.

Hayley is an outspoken and passionate liberal, which clashes heavily with Stan’s outlook on the world as a white republican male. This dynamic is explored in a number of ways, including several topical issues such as marajuana usage, gun control, and animal rights. Both of these characters are incredibly stubborn, each going to extreme lengths to drive a point home, even if it means contradicting their original point of argument that they began with.

Almost none of these episodes ends with Hayley and Stan truly understanding each others point of view, but what they do eventually connect on is the fact that they really love each other despite their opposing beliefs. Though he hates to admit it, Stan sees a lot of himself in Hayley, and she is able to connect with her father in a way she isn’t truly able to with Francine.

A relationship this complex is simply not possible to replicate in Family Guy. Peter’s connection with Chris is essentially non-existent, and his relationship with Meg is nothing short of abusive.

It’s the only thing that binds them. Even some of the earliest episodes spin a terrible tale of how Peter views his daughter. The second episode depicts Peter crashing into and destroying the towns television signal only to blame the accident on Meg, turning the town against her.

The treatment of Meg Griffin only gets worse from here, the joke of abusing her being pushed so hard that it eventually loses all humour and simply becomes the depressing life of a teenage girl who cannot catch a break.

Season Twelve, Episode Ninteen: “Meg Stinks” has Peter and Meg bonding during a road trip to view her college of choice. The manner in which they bond could have been sweet, but in the end Peter ultimately says that they can only be friends in secret, and it’s never truly brought up again. This is one of, if not the only episodes in which Peter is actually nice to his daughter, and yet it somehow manages to be one of the most depressing episodes of the entire show.

Family Guy seems to be having an eternal identity crisis. It wants us to love and care about its characters by throwing in subpar family drama episodes in here and there, but can’t actually bring itself to have the characters act like they like each other in the slightest.

American Dad, on the other hand, regularly depicts Stan and Francine having a loving relationship. Steve and Stan don’t always get along, but there are tons of episodes in which they end up having a good time together. The same can be said for Stan and Hayley.

This continuing evolution of character dynamics in American Dad gives the show a longevity that Family Guy has failed to achieve. Where The Griffins are running on fumes, The Smiths are pumping out some of their best episodes yet.

At the end of the day, each person has their own tastes and sense of what stories are worth watching, but these are the reasons that I believe American Dad is far more worthy of your time than Family Guy ever will be.