I did think it was nice that American Dad bothered to give the Smith family some kind of reason to have an alien and a talking goldfish around (relating to his work with the CIA). Family Guy – and I’ve only seen a handful of episodes, so I might have missed the explanation – just kind of said, “Oh, there’s a talking dog” and left it at that, didn’t it?
Brian was picked up by Peter hitchhiking. He was a poor starving dog and Peter brought him over for a home cooked meal (Lois cooked) and he stayed. It was in the dog show episode. I hope that’s right.
Yeah, I didn’t care for the show. It was the Poochie of Family Guy. Some pilots do lead to amazing shows, like The Venture Brothers. Although the Family Guy pilot didn’t change too much from the overall feel of the series. I may accidentally catch it on Adult Swim but I’ll be playing games on my PC while it’s on.
Eh… on a ridiculous show like Family Guy, you don’t really need an explanation for a talking dog. Or a talking baby, or any of the other ridiculous things that happens. This show looks to be the same way. It’s not as if the explanations of the alien and the fish were convincing, and you also had god talking to GW Bush on the phone and taking orders from Dick Cheney.
Cont.
Of course he was just born talking and no one explained why he was like that and no one noticed why it was weird.
Sooo… ummmm. submit
…but that wasn’t explained for several episodes at least; possibly not until a few seasons in. At first it was just understood that the dog spoke, and nobody questioned why.
Oh, and Brian was a drunk living on the street. He cleaned Peter’s windshield at a red light but Peter didn’t have money to give him, so he brought him home for a warm meal instead.
It was just a poor knockoff of Family Guy. Sort of what you’d see if Hana-Barbera decided to copy it. Really, really bad.
Overall I thought it was kind of sucky. I thought there were a couple funny bits, God calling Dubya and the old dog peeing dust. I agree that the alien and talking goldfish were too much. Perhaps if the alien or the goldfish were only a one episode gag it wouldn’t have been too bad.
I really think this is too much liek Family Guy, but with bad jokes. It’s almsot like they made show out of all the jokes that were rejected by Family Guy. Even the characters are too similar.
Peter = Dad (forget name.) Both are single minded, Petere is jsut single mindedly dumb, while Dad is sinlge minded right-wing psycho. Both seem to ignore the obvious facts surronding them because theyare in their own world.
Wife - Lois. Both are homemakers (and kinda hot in an odd, carton sort of way.) Although Lois does seem smarter than Wife.
Steve (son) = Chris. Not good with ladies, same age, gets advice from dad that is pretty much useless.
Daugher = Meg. Granted, the only real similarity is gender and positino in family, though daughter is older sicne she is in community colege. But parts of Meg (like being a loser with the opposite sex) seem to have been given to steve.
Alien = Stewey. A smart, possibly gay, character that is mostly there for one liners.
Fish = Brian. Talking pet that is in love with wife.
The half-dead dog was funny, but at the same time…kinda nasty, especially when the daughter brought it in to the prof., cause it was dead and rotting.
I agree; hopefully this will be rectified in future episodes. 
This wasn’t as good as Family Guy because it’s all the same characters and jokes but they actually tried to shoehorn in a plot. Family Guy exists as a loose structure to do celebrity parodies and spot-on impressions of TV shows of his childhood, and it’s brilliant. There’s a reason that everyone considers the phone call with God the best part, and that’s basically the only time they went wide afield from their sitcom as established.
Now, I think it’s quite likely that MacFarlane tried to rein it in for the Am. Dad pilot, either on his own or on notes from the network, afraid of exposing the pilot audience to the pointlessness that marked Family Guy. But that’s what made FG work. If we’re lucky, the reins will be loosed by the next episode. If we’re unlucky, MacFarlane is going to try to make American Dad his show where things actually happen for reasons and there’s more to it than a scaffold for jokes about the '70’s. I don’t know if MacFarlane can do that – this episode suggests he can’t. But we know he can do the other. (And the fact that the alien sounds like Paul Lynne gives me hope.)
–Cliffy
I thought the Simpson’s episode was half-baked and kinda crappy until this dreck came on. Absolutely unwatchable.
I wasn’t overwhelmed, but I didn’t thinks it was bad. Average was my assessment. I enjoyed it more than the last few seasons of the Simpsons.
Of course, I thought the first five or six episodes of Family Guy were boring.
That show didn’t find its mark until the first full season (I think it coincided with Mila Kunis’s arrival). Maybe this show will hit its stride as well.
There are some nice peices in place to work with here.
I do wonder whether the success of F.G. will hurt A.D.'s chances. I would think F.G. will get more attention from McFarlane. Plus, I think A.D. was approved before they resurrected F.G. Maybe in a world with a returned F.G., there won’t be a need for A.D.
I for one hope the show gels and we get two great shows.
Definitely a little too close for comfort to FG. It must have been hard as hell for Seth to stop making FG and start from scratch when FG was the source for all his creative output so I can understand the similarities up to a point but he needs to let AD find it’s own comedic legs to stand on. I’m not giving up on this one yet.
I dunno i only laughed twice.
Once with the bit about the old dog and the dust.
The other where they showed that the fish’s brain was transplaned with the East German skiier, and you saw the skiier on the jump making the “pop”“pop”“pop” fish face as he want down the jump and then falling on the ground.
The rest… blah.
Oh and if I remember correctly a lot of people called FG a rip off of The Simpsons at first.
A lot of people still do.
Amen and Hallelujah. That fish made me unreasonably angry, it’s so bad.
Doesn’t make sense to me. That’s what he’s known for, that’s what Family Guy was known for. People are famliar with it and it was pretty popular.
I don’t see why this would be a bad thing. But I don’t think anybody needs two shows like that. It’s arguable whether we need one.
This was a reference to something? I’m on the East Coast & I certainly didn’t pick up on any deeper joke.
I was extremely underwhelmed, as I was when Family Guy first premiered after the Super Bowl 5 years ago. I thought it was a Simpsons derivative then, I just didn’t register my disapproval on the Internet at the time. I watch it occasionally on Adult Swim now for a few yuks, but it wouldn’t have changed my life if they’d never brought it back.
It’s a bad thing because the evidence suggests that MacFarlane can’t do it.
And as for reigning it in, if you don’t think a network has ever said that they love characteristic of a show at the exact same time that they say it needs to be toned down, you’re not listening to enough DVD commentaries. This is exactly the type of thing that might happen to a pilot. I don’t know that it did, but it certainly could.
–Cliffy
Jack-in-the-Box is a hamburger restaurant on the West Coast who is well-known for its speaker boxes which are shaped like clown heads. Their advertising features a man named Jack who is a human with a clown head.
Chocodiles are a Hostess product sold only on the West Coast. They are basically Twinkies covered in chocolate.
(I have only heard of the two, and have never eaten either.)