Title: American Dad Volume 7
Released: OUT NOW
Format: 3 disc DVD box set
Rating: 15
Price: £27.99 (RRP)
Episodes: 19
Runtime: 418 minutes
Stan Smith, the most dedicated and disturbed CIA agent is back! American Dad Volume 7, the hit US show from Seth MacFarlane, is now available on DVD courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Stan Smith is a blundering CIA agent. He loves guns. He’s homophobic, bigoted and he’s unrelentingly cruel to his son Steve a wimpy, nerdy but intelligent, highschooler. He’s even crueller to his daughter Hayley a peace-loving, eco-friendly, dope-smoking, promiscuous, college student. And to top it all off he is totally unappreciative of his loving and attractive wife Francine. Yet, despite his numerous faults he can be a sympathetic character and he is consistently funny to watch. He always sees the error of his ways and makes things up with his wife and kids. Admittedly he always irritates them just as badly in the next episode.
In the world of animated sitcoms such as The Simpsons, Family Guy or American Dad characters seem to live in a state of permanent limbo, apart from small changes, they never age and never really change. Whilst in sitcoms with real life actors who age in real life animated characters are immune to aging so we have a snapshot of a family at certain point in time. Francine and Stan are always in their early forties, maybe Francine is slightly younger (she’s hot for a animated character right? Or have I been watching the show too much?) and their children Haley is forever 17 and Steve is forever 14.
The characters do have experiences, and in several episodes there is the distinct passage of time several episodes take place over several months take for example the fact that in season V alone there was an episode that had Francine move to live in Africa for over a year and adopt an African child, or the episode where Stan pretended to be dead for about a year in order to appreciate that Francine really loved him and not someone else. If the passage of time was recorded literally it’d be a very different show at least a dozen years would have passed over the first 99 episodes which is where we found ourselves at the end of volume VI.
Yet instead, at the end of every episode the slate is wiped clean and at the beginning of the next instalment everything is back to normal. No doubt it’d be odd if too much time had passed, by now both Haley and Steve would have left home and would both have jobs and would probably not feature much in the show. What would Haley be I wonder? Well she’s been an erotic dancer before and that didn’t quite work out. Steve would be a computer programmer or doing something equally geeky. Perhaps Francine would have got a job, instead of being a housewife, who knows? Well we do get a look into the future in a couple of shows actually there is a particularly funny episode where Francine finds out that she was once a successful breakout stand-up comedian until Stan had her hypnotised which apparently he needed to do once a year to make her forget all the things that she hates about him. And In a later episode we do actually find out what Francine’s life would be like without her family when she takes on the life of another woman (in a Sliding Doors type episode) and we see her live out ten years of her life only to ultimately get the chance to return to the point where her life diverged in order to choose to go back to her family. It’s a fun episode.
Volume VII, kicks off with 100AD the 100th episode of the show where Haley re-unites with stoner/slacker boyfriend Jeff Fischer and elopes. Haley and Jeff swindle Stan out of some money and some real plot development does occur. They spend time away from the family for a couple of episodes until they run out of money and both end up moving back to live with Stan and Francine. Although it works out well for Stan as in the episode he had gone to visit his more successful half-brother which ended very badly for him until Haley and Jeff saved the day!
Of course the basic premise for the show never changes there are the usual crazy, and frankly ridiculous storylines that we have by now come accustomed to. Every episode Stan seems to alienate his family, his boss, or his neighbours due to one or another, usually bigoted, deep-seated belief such as racism, homophobia, love of guns, misunderstanding of any and all forms of love, or just plain puerile behaviour. Naturally he always learns the errors of his ways almost always involving a long drawn out speech in which he tells his family that he has learnt from making mistakes and promises not to do so again at least until the next episode when everything is suitably reset for him to once again make a fool of himself. To some extent this device can become a little tiresome. He’s made the same, big, mistakes time and time again now and perhaps that lacks believability but then after all it is an animated sitcom.
That aside, once again American Dad volume VII is funny and amusing throughout, each episode having it’s own charms and varying types of comedy from slapstick humour, to darker humour, to dry, or wry humour. It remains the best animated comedy with certainly some of the most engaging characters. There are episodes that I literally have to rewind or watch again at a later date because I missed sections of the show for laughing too hard. It seems to match my personal taste of humour very well. I love some of the crueller humour when Stan is mean to Haley or Steve and in volume VII it seems as though Francine has also got in on the act of being cruel to Steve as well often calling him a geek or a nerd she dislikes her own son! You might not find that hilarious, but I certainly do.
Another change for volume VII is an increase in the use of the F-word which I must say I fully approve of this is adult humour and I have no problem with the use of this type of language in the correct setting for comedic effect. In previous volumes such swear words had been bleeped out and I did find that irritating and frankly unnecessary. I’m not going to let anyone under the age of 15 watch this sort of show and if it’s 15 rated then I think it’s fine to have more adult content Some of the sexual things that Francine says to Haley for example are priceless - rude yes, sometimes crude, certainly - but so funny you might accidentally wet yourself...
Episode List
100 A.D.
Son of Stan
Best Little Horror House in Langley Falls
Stan's Food Restaurant
White Rice
There Will Be Bad Blood
The People vs. Martin Sugar
For Whom the Sleigh Bell Tolls
Fart-Break Hotel
Stanny Boy and Frantastic
A Piρata Named Desire
You Debt Your Life
I Am the Walrus
School Lies
License to Till
Jenny Fromdablo
Home Wrecker
Flirting with Disaster
Gorillas in the Mist
American Dad volume VII comes highly recommended.
