The pilot of American Dad! premiered on February 6, 2005, directly after Super Bowl XXXIX on Fox. Originally intended to fill the Family Guy-shaped hole left after the series’ cancellation, its revival a mere three months later left the two shows—both created by Seth MacFarlane and both airing on FOX—to compete. Today, following almost two decades on the air and a move to TBS, American Dad! has maintained significant popularity and raised the bar for syndicated adult animation by having the greatest thing a sitcom can have: an impeccable cast of characters.
To understand the strength of American Dad!’s characters, one need not look further than the cast of Family Guy. The Griffin family is undoubtedly iconic, but they suffer from ambiguous characterization and missed potential. The dichotomy between Peter’s middle-class brewery job and Lois’s background of wealth is barely acknowledged save for Peter’s father-in-law despising him, a trope rarely absent in sitcoms. Their son Chris’s struggles with adolescence are too few and far between to be compelling, and teenage daughter Meg’s role as the family punching bag is unsavory to say the least. Stewie the baby and Brian the dog are probably the two strongest personalities on the show–particularly the former. First portrayed respectively as a mad scientist and the show’s voice of reason, their development over the decades—Stewie becoming blatantly and effeminately gay and Brian growing more pretentious—has been gradual and in line with their characters without losing sight of their origins. Unsurprisingly, episodes focused on the duo are the show’s highlights, specifically their roadshow-themed adventures that pop up every few seasons. The rest of the cast serve only as toys to be pranced along through whatever shenanigans the writers envision each week. That’s not to say the show is bad; although its quality has wavered over the years, its use of cutaways as a comedic device is the show’s greatest advantage, allowing an endless amount of humor and topical reference. It is worth noting, however, that the show’s reliance on this style of comedy is likely due to most of the characters’ inability to carry an episode on their own.
While Family Guy must rely on cutaways to be topical, American Dad!’s Smith family is itself a vessel for political satire, a parody of the archetypal nuclear family found both in the history of American television and in the nation’s collective consciousness. Stan, the patriarch, is a red-blooded nationalist who works for the CIA. Although he commonly displays moments of idiocy—particularly when spouting conservative rhetoric—his ability to escape from capture and go toe-to-toe with terrorists makes him far more capable than the average sitcom father. Francine’s doting housewife facade belies a savage spirit bubbling underneath. Her wild side is repressed by expectations of homemaking, only peeking out when she drowns a bird with blank-eyed stare or convinces her family to engage in cannibalism after their refusal to engage in a nice Sunday dinner. Hayley, Stan and Francine’s daughter, is a caricatural tree-hugging leftist who doesn’t always practice what she preaches, such as when she binge eats at the UN headquarters while children starve in a refugee camp outside. Steve, Hayley’s brother, is a wimpy teenage nerd whose voice actor, Scott Grimes, provides him with an extraordinary amount of charisma. It takes a great talent to make loveable a whiny adolescent with aspirations as silly as clowning or backup dancing, and Grimes nails it every time. The pet goldfish, Klaus, is likely the show’s least cohesive character, as his convoluted backstory—once an East German Olympic ski jumper, his brain was switched with a goldfish by the CIA to ensure his nation’s loss in the 1986 Winter Olympics—is good for about one joke. Still, Klaus also has standout moments of humor due to his haplessness and the scorn he receives from the other members of the family.
These characters alone would make for an enjoyable watch, but none of them hold a candle to the absolute wildcard that is Roger. A Roswell Grey alien that saved Stan’s life in a shootout at Area 51, he now lives in the attic of the Smith house and assumes alternate personas when venturing outside to keep secret his extraterrestrial identity. He is an ostentatious hedonist whose pettiness knows no bounds, and creator MacFarlane’s genius comedic timing keeps Roger as the preeminent source of hilarity at all times, even when becoming a dictator of a banana republic or desecrating the grave of his ex-wife solely for the purpose of creating a wig from her hair. Furthermore, his madcap collection of alter-egos spices up an already well-founded cast of characters, thrusting the other members of the Smith family into confrontations with the most bizarre personalities that anyone could possibly conceive of. A wedding planner with ties to the mob? Jeanie Gold. A news anchor with stories such as “Is Heroin the New Cure for Cancer?” and “Bulimia: Bad for you, But is it Good for Your Toilet?” Genevieve Vavance. A sociopath who burns down petting zoos and defecates in the open torso of a man undergoing surgery? Ricky Spanish. Crass, absurd, and delightfully flamboyant, Roger has also become something of a queer icon—with his swish accent and proclivity to dress in drag, it’s easy to understand why. In 2014, he was voted “Gayest Cartoon Character of All Time” in an online poll by Logo.
The sitcom is a unique genre of television in that it exists solely as a showcase of characters’ shenanigans rather than compelling storytelling. American Dad!’s family-based approach excels at parodying the genre. Its use of the medium of animation permits its characters—particularly a certain extraterrestrial master of disguise—to fall into any and all manner of wacky and unexpected circumstances. While Family Guy may have been the blueprint for Seth MacFarlane’s television dynasty, American Dad! perfected the formula.