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This past Sunday, an old new face returned to Fox’s storied animation lineup. Following “Family Guy” at 8 and “Universal Basic Guys” at 8:30, 9 p.m. saw the season premiere of “American Dad!” It’s a homecoming for the series, which premiered in 2005 and ran for 11 seasons before getting canceled by the network in 2014. Its death was short-lived because it was quickly acquired by TBS and ran quietly but successfully for another 11 years, even as cable networks like TBS began heavily divesting in producing original content.
Last year, that tenuous position changed again, as TBS canceled the series; again, fans had little time to mourn the show, because it was announced the same day Fox was considering bringing it back. Ultimately, the series comes back to its original home with the promise of longevity, with a four season pickup that will carry it all the way to the 2028-2029 broadcast season.
Adult animated series running for an extremely, extremely long time is not a unique phenomenon: just look at Fox’s lineup, where “The Simpsons” already has a renewal through a landmark 40th season and a second movie coming up, “Family Guy” has been running for 24 seasons since 1999 (well, give or take a brief three year cancellation), and “Bob’s Burgers” has been steady comfort food for 15 years. “American Dad!” also isn’t the only animated show to survive a death or two, including shows like “Futurama” or “King of the Hill” that have resurrected themselves on streaming.
Still, the long life of “American Dad” feels surprising when you consider it has never exactly been a top-shelf animated series (it has only ever received two Emmy Award nominations for Animated Program, winning neither), generally flying under the radar compared to the bigger hits. It was dismissed upon its premiere as a clone of “Family Guy,” and has always been typically thought of as that other Seth MacFarlane animated show.
What’s more, the cultural context “American Dad!” was initially created in response to has more or less completely dissipated. The show began as, essentially, “All in the Family” for the George Bush administration, a satire of jingoistic mid-2000s America in which the CIA weapons expert and Republican lead Stan clashes with his more liberal family. Early episodes were so heavily steeped in the cultural tension of the time, such as an episode where Stan grows paranoid when an Iranian family moves into the neighborhood, that it’s difficult to see how the show could evolve through three different administrations and counting.
Not only has the show stayed on air, “American Dad” has achieved something rare despite its network changes: consistency. All of Fox’s long-running shows, plus other animation institutions like “South Park,” have had fallow periods where they ran out of gas creatively, and you can see shifts in their writing approach as they adapt to the times (“The Simpsons” has had a few good recent seasons that have leaned more heavily on meta humor, “Family Guy” has become a bit softer-bellied and sweeter as its aged, and “South Park” has gotten renewed attention for its extremely topical — if not particularly incredible — satire of the Trump administration 2.0.). “American Dad,” on the other hand, has been consistently strong since very early in its run, where it largely shed the political satire to become a more character-based sitcom.
What’s its secret? Well, it helps that the show has had a relatively stable creative team behind it from the jump. Although Macfarlane voices Stan and is the biggest name attached to the show, for most of its existence, the series was handled by the other co-creators Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman; Weitzman is still co-showrunner of the series along with Brian Boyle.
Furthermore, what makes “American Dad” good has been the exact thing that’s allowed it to run for such a long time: its simplicity. In spite of the obvious comparisons to “Family Guy,” the show actually has a very different sensibility and style of humor, leaning less on topical references (the cutaway gags that are the “Family Guy” signature aren’t present at all) and more on situational-based comedy.
From their start as a collection of stereotypes, the cast quickly became sharper and more well-defined, and also (in a rarity for an animated series) more likable: Stan went from a paper-thin cut out of a Bush-era Republican to a dumb and smug but loving father, his kids Hayley and Steve evolved from thin foils for their dad to more dynamic characters, and the show refreshingly completely avoided the stereotypical sensible wife by making Francine into someone even crazier and sillier than her husband. Best of all, Roger the alien evolved from a cheap copycat of Brian from “Family Guy” into an insane, genius creation, a sociopathic but fabulous alien (and drag icon) with hundreds of different personas that allows the show to take the character and an episode in any weird, creative direction they please.
The season premiere, “Aw Rats, a Pool Party” isn’t an S-tier episode of the series, exactly, but it’s still a solid outing. The show gets the obligatory acknowledgment of its return to Fox out of the way quickly (“Getting back together after so many years could be a disaster,” Hayley says as the channel’s logo flashes in the bottom of the screen) before launching into a light, interconnected farce where Francine and the family throw a pool party that turns into a disaster when a dead rat shows up in the water. There are some solid jokes, one extremely weird and creative sequence involving anthropomorphic bacteria, and a sweet ending that arrives at its pathos quite naturally. In other words, it’s a solid, strong episode of “American Dad” — the type the show has been producing for 20 years, and will keep on producing for more years to come.
