Dads - Episode 1 - Review - Series Premiere
Dads - Episode 1 - Review - Pilot
Hoo boy. Tonight, FOX premiered Dads, a live-action half-hour comedy from their go-to cartoon man Seth MacFarlane. He's created three of the network's hugely successful animated shows and has started directing live-action movies, so the move into flesh-and-blood TV seems a natural assumption. Unfortunately, the same crass lunacy found in Family Guy or American Dad doesn't read quite as well in this format as it doesn't when everything is a brightly-colored drawing.
The premise of the show is solid and simple: Eli (Seth Green) is a producer working in a video game studio. He's joined by a business associate named Warner, his close friend. The associate laments his father coming to live with him. Eli is glad he doesn't have to suffer the same fate, but by the end of the episode (spoilers), he invites his pitiful father to move in. Clean, simple. Some basic 1970s-style sitcom stuff right here. Except, to go along with that 1970s-style scenario, we also have some 1970s-style racism and sexism. I could see the argument being made for having a doddering old dad say some slightly off-color stuff, with the humor being found in how out-of-touch he is, but instead, the doddering old dad say off-color stuff and that's the entire joke. It's not anyone condemns the guy. Plus, the young guys have their fair share also.
In fact, I've compiled a small list of the episode's racist jokes.- Someone makes a reference to a company that owns the copyright to "Black Santa". I think the joke here is meant to be that black people... exist? I don't know.
- Eli and Warner get their Chinese coworker dressed up in a Japanese schoolgirl sailor suit to impress Chinese investors. This was also the first female character introduced on the show. The first thing she does is talk about being Chinese, and the next thing she does is dress up as a Japanese stereotype. The writers weren't even good at being accurately racist here!
- We meet a Latina maid who speaks broken English. That's it, that's all she does.
- One of the titular dads (Warner's) says his son is meeting with "some Orientals" and then says "There's a reason why Shanghai is a verb" and then makes a joke about mispronouncing "Shiite Muslim" and then calls a video game Warner is playing "Punch the Puerto Rican". This is the dad that I guess is meant to fill the Archie Bunker role of being humorously ignorant. Instead, he just says a bunch of slightly racist stuff that doesn't even have the pretense of being structured as jokes. The furthest he seems to get is merely mentioning that non-white people exist, and that sets the canned laughter off.
- The last several minutes of the show are spent on one "tiny Asian penis" joke. On top of being racist, this is also the laziest nonsense. If you're going to do offensive bullshit anyway, could you at least try something new? I've been hearing some variant on this joke since forever. Actually, better plan: If you're going to use a tired, well-worn joke pick one that isn't racist, you dummies.
- Eli's dad is watching a Holocaust documentary on TV. I think this is the entire joke?? I wouldn't normally have flagged this as racist, but it's there for seemingly no reason and this show doesn't get the benefit of the doubt at this point.
- Eli's dad also confuses Warner's Latina wife for a maid.
On to the good...
Well, there's not much.- The cast has been good in other things.
- The preview for episode two looks like it might be watchable.
- Seth Green's beard isn't too creepy.