Oh my, how long I’ve been waiting for this moment. Anyone who’s read a decent portion of my blog knows that I do not find Seth MacFarlane to be the most revolutionary TV show writer, and although I like Family Guy, I’ve blasted him and pretty much all his shows as well as this one, Dads.
Now where do I begin? How about the laughter track? The purpose of laughter track escapes me. The only way a laughter track could be good was if it featured everybody from the Skype laughter chain, and even then, if they split their sides at every little fucking line, it’d get annoying. If anything, it only served to remind how me how utterly unfunny and shitty the jokes were.
Seth Green’s face here perfectly mirrors my exact reaction while watching Dads.
Oh, and the amount of cheap jokes about stereotypes in this show could pose some problems later on in the series when they inevitably run out of stereotypes to repeat. Let’s play guess what culture the jokes are talking about!
“My dad beat me with a math book till I was sixteen.”
“No, because you’re going to dress up as a sexy, [blank] schoolgirl.”
“And thanks to your beautiful maid for making all this food”/“I’m his wife.”
“The [blank] are lovely and honourable people, but you can’t trust them.”
“That creepy translator texted me a picture of his tiny penis.”
Did you get it? It went Chinese, Chinese, Latina, Chinese and Chinese. I’m not offended by the stereotypes (despite the first and last ones actually reinforcing them), but it seems like extremely lazy writing directed at people who laugh more than punk criminals in 90’s action movies.
Now, obviously due to my well-documented but largely unseen dislike towards this show even prior to its release, you might think I have been really fucking bias. And I understand. But I was well aware of that before I started watching it, so I decided I would try my hardest to smile if I found anything they said or did even relatively amusing.
Now if that’s not the most airtight solution in gaining a fair balance, I don’t know what is.
I smiled twice, once towards the end when Seth Green’s character, Eli sees his dad in the taxi at a red light and another time when I saw a funky light-up PS3 controller that Eli and Warner were using, which turned out to be the best thing about this show.
An extremely lame and forced deus ex machine, fittingly, resolves the plot. After a deal went wrong earlier in the show, Eli, Warner and their fathers walk into their workplace, talk for a while, before Brenda Song’s character comes in and says they got the deal. How? The translator texted her a dick pic and she threatened to make it public unless he convinced his bosses to take the deal. Because fuck it.
I don’t know much about businesses, but how much power does a sub-par translator (who didn’t seem very fluent in English considering he was working for a company that is investing millions) have?
The show ends with each one of the characters making a separate joke about the penis picture.
If I had to rate this show, its unlovable characters and its half-assed, overused plot, I’d give it a “fuck you” out of 10. Because that’s what I’d say to any fans of the show and that’s what Seth MacFarlane is saying to original comedy.
Life in a Television Show 
I love how much you seem to hate him. You genuinely made me smile several times throughout. Brilliant writing, don’t you know.
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