American Dad

It only took two episodes of American Dad to dismiss the show as a Family Guy re-hash. But it's long since surpassed its predecessor.

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It only took two episodes of American Dad for the whole of America to dismiss the show. It was a pale rip-off of the Family Guy formula (boorish dad, nymphomaniac wife, dorky kids, talking pet). Its political views (those stupid, wacky right-wingers!) were heavy-handed (Stan’s a fl ag-waving, gun-waving neocon) and predictable. It was a derivative of a derivative show.

But then — as the constant decline of The Simpsons and Family Guy continued — American Dad became Fox’s best cartoon comedy.

Part of that’s because it ditched Family Guy’s Mad Lib pop-culture cutaways (“You think that’s bad, what about the time Optimus Prime got a Beanie Baby at Denny’s?”) Part of it was that it dropped the clunky political satire. But mainly it was because, unlike so many TV shows, American Dad takes really big, sorta-idiotic risks.

A recent American Dad episode, “Rapture’s Delight,” starts out like any other generic Seth McFarlane show — with Roger the atheist alien mocking religion and dad Stan Smith’s belief in the Rapture. (Those stupid, wacky dispensationalists!)

But then, it gets weird: The Rapture actually happens. Naked people across the world float to the heavens.

It gets weirder. Stan’s wife, angry at him for his selfishness, leaves him and starts dating, well, Jesus.

It gets weirder. There’s a seven-years-later transition, revealing the rubble and rabble of a post-Armageddon world — a mash-up of Mad Max and Escape from New York. With a hook for a hand and an eye- TiVo-Worthy patch, Stan’s become a grizzled Snake Plisskin homage.

He growls B-movie one-liners: “I guess I just picked a whole bouquet of Oopsie-Daisies.”

It gets weirder. Stan and Jesus have a climactic gun battle with the Antichrist (outfitted in a red suit and upside-down crosses, like an Adam West Batman villain) in the bowels of his United Nations headquarters. In the end, Stan takes a bullet for Jesus, so his ex-wife can be with the one she loved — Jesus.

Blasphemous? Sure. But it’s the nave slightly sweet kind of blasphemy, not the vicious kind you’d fi nd on Family Guy.

The best part? It’s not a fantasy or dream sequence. It’s canon. That’s the beauty of the animated sitcom. It can go places. It’s not bound by the house-bar-offi ce set choice of a live show.

American Dad, along with The Venture Bros., pushes the possibilities of animated comedy to apocalypse and beyond.

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