Note the disclaimer. WARNING: This video contains animated violence and mature themes, so if that bothers you than skip this list :)
We don't often see it, but American Dad has something very dark lurking within.
Deep below the show's really polished exterior looks one of the darkest, cruelest,
most nihilistic and ugly undertones I've ever seen in an animated show.
Sometimes having EVEN MORE
hate-filled creepy and horrifyingly insensitive moments than Family Guy!
Stan: You ever wish someone you know would die?
Often not even bothering with the excuse of shock humor for some scenes!
I'm not kidding! Some of these moments are... even worse!
Undercover CIA torture!
LIVE SURGERY!
Cannibalism? That's... pretty hard to top on the revulsion meter.
With that being said, there may be some episodes on this list that you like.
If so, that's great. :)
It's just my silly personal opinion,
and it's great that you can enjoy something that I can't.
And with that said, let's take a look back at the top 10 worst American Dad episodes of all time.
#10
"Blagnarst a Love Story" (S11 E03), I thought watching an ugly breakup would be bad
But watching a breakup where one sides trying to murder the other is impressively
unpleasant! The majority of this episode is just about Roger being a jerk to his new
girlfriend. Trying to break up with her, which I just didn't find all that funny Roger then
finishes the episode off by trying to get his girlfriend dissected and killed.
I don't mind Roger being heartless,
it's part of what makes his character, but this episode just has that Seth branded ugly
misogynistic breakup feel throughout the whole thing. "Help I crashed and I don't have a boyfriend."
He then saves his girlfriend from the CIA only to murder her himself!
"Jealous that we have the kind of love that's greater than anything in the entire galaxy"
Am I just missing a hidden joke there? She talked a lot and wanted a committed relationship,
so she deserves to die? What admittedly there is one or two really funny scenes :)
Stan: "You know what let's go out to eat." But for the most part
It's just long-winded, dull, and has tons of slowly dragged out scenes.
Personally I wasn't a fan.
#9
"Hot Water" (S7 E01)
This was actually the episode that stopped me watching the series for a good six months!
And made me NEVER want to get a hot tub EVER for fear of being sung to death!
Stan gets a magic 30 year old hot tub that he begins to obsess over,
neglecting his entire world in favor of being in the hot tub all the time! This is just a surreal,
weird episode and seems to have more singing than ANY other episode mostly a singing hot tub.
It's just an episode that felt cheesy, and kind of lame. I'm sure Cee Lo Green is a nice guy,
I just really didn't have any interest in hearing him narrate or sing over this surreal mind-screw.
Everyone seems to take a shot at singing in this episode, and I guess that would be okay
But it just seems to come out of nowhere.
There's nothing insultingly bad about this one, I mean the ending is pretty lame with everyone just kind of dying
anticlimactically. It's kind of a creepy ending as well, and it's
unsatisfying to watch all these characters just being DISTURBINGLY murdered.
It's kind of an interesting episode, but in the end it just felt like an inconsistent
confusing mess.
"Well there you have it. That's our story Stan's dead. Good night."
And for #8
Pulling Double Booty (S04 E06). What could possibly be more awkward than Peter marrying his son Chris?
How about Haley and making out with her father?
Well an exact doppelganger of her father,
but it brings discomfort to new levels, and
Stan's fine with it! In fact, he encourages Haley to continue making out with his exact doppelganger
Haley: "He is a great kisser."
Seth seems to have this strange obsession with incest in some of these episodes.
I'm not sure why? Maybe because it's controversial and gross to most people. Then they pull the old
switcheroo and Stan starts impersonating his doppelganger
Haley of course starts unknowingly making plans have sex with Stan. Oh boy
This is right up there on the creepe-o-meter. That being said, there's kind of a nice ending to this one.
What stan discovers Hayley just wants him to say he loves her more often with a kind of funny conclusion. Stan: "Whoa? Hey Johnny?
Yeah, it's work." Hayley: "Oh
my God, are you kidding me?!" and that ending puts it pretty high on the worst list
#7
"Rubberneckers" (S09 E17)
Let's start the episode with a song about judging women, and telling men how to effectively peep on them.
The episode does treat women like objects,
but maybe I should just expect that in this show as there's generally a lot of personal attacks on women and Seth's shows.
Stan even starts taking pictures of women he pervs on. Maybe it's just me, but isn't that falling more into the illegal stalker
territory than just being a guy? The entire episode is mainly about Stan trying to cover up his mess of rubbernecking while
bombarding the viewer with
Unnecessarily long sing-alongs! Like, did we really need to see a 14 year old jiggling pecks as he sings over his lust for his mother?
That's gross in like three different ways!
These songs just go on, and on, and on!
That being said the ending is actually really funny and plays the rubbernecking joke up well.
That's one of the problems with doing a worst list of this show, with a few exceptions
There aren't that many episodes that are just outright bad all the way through! there will be some very bad segments,
but they'll often have
Redeeming jokes with other characters throughout the episode, and that really is a credit just how much polish this show really has.
And for #6
Dr Klaustus (S07 E13) Ever wanted to see a family have an angry quarrel for 20 minutes?
I'm gonna guess you probably said no, and me neither
The episode mainly consists of Klaus being ignored, and the entire family lying to one another again
It's not insultingly bad, but the episode just wasn't even remotely funny! Steve: "Suck it fish!"
(Quarreling)
For some reason Seth's writing team just seems to really enjoy showing families yelling into one other. It's like
They just assume that somewhere along the way the audience will laugh!
This episode really shows that Klaus is the Meg of the show, and it's a shame because I actually found him among the nicest characters
In the show. The one part I did really laughs that was when Roger is deployed to war in Iraq in order to clean toilets.
Roger: "Yep, we got a meet clogged private up the suction!" And that really was funny to watch, so it helps redeem the episode. The main
Story though just wasn't my cup of tea. "Maybe he's just going number one
He's got a magazine!"
Roger: "Our father who art in Heaven"
#5
"42-Year-Old Virgin" S03 E06.
But it also gives us one of those bizarre little peaks into the nihilistic, cruel minds of the writers.
Stan's CIA friends are horrified to discover that he's never killed anyone! "you've never popped your cherry!" (Laughter)
Stan: "No!"
So they begin to parade people who are "killable" in front of them. Roger: "This is Gladys,
She's 46 never been married despite years of trying had a hysterectomy, so even if she does find that special someone, haha."
I guess it comes more into the U.S.
Capital Punishment System,
but spending the episode showing off characters they consider the most "deserving to die". Seemed really dark, and
Stan's entire family shuns him because he hasn't killed a person!
Apparently he's not cool because he hasn't killed anyone? I get there playing this reaction for laughs, the whole thing just felt uncomfortable
to top it off, there's a really long pedophile segment as well which essentially is prepping Steve and his friends to be molested.
I can see a lot of people liking this one as it did have some good jokes, but it wasn't really for me.
"Shallow Vows" S05 E06.
The bitter married couple has never been something I found that funny a concept.
I mean, do that many people really want to be reminded of bitter, angry, shallow relationships that are based solely on looks?
That's a horrible premise for an episode!
Francine discover Stan married her only for a looks, which he openly admits with disturbing callousness.
So Francine lets herself go,
quite a lot. So when they re-wedded Stan abandons her, because he can't stand to be near her anymore.
Wow.
Over 20 years of marriage not even a hint of platonic love developed?
Stan: "Francine be careful lift with your fat ugly legs, not your fat ugly back." so Stan decides to get his retinas removed
so he can stand to look at his wife.
wow, this is insulting to men and women of all shapes and sizes.
They finished the episode by missing the Francine will only stay with Stan as long as he's mentally well and Stan will only stay with
Francine as long as she's attractive.
Stan's openly shallow, and uncaring attitude towards his wife has just never fully Sat with me right.
I mean, I get that some couples might be like this, and physical attraction is an important element of a relationship.
But it's just such a bitter concept for an episode, that I don't quite get where I was meant to laugh
The one thing I could take from this episode is that Stan and Francine
honestly deserve each other. Stan: "I
promise when you start to sag to subject you to risky elective surgery." Francine: "And, I
Promise to be with you only if you make money, and stay healthy."
Stan: "Alzheimer's runs in my family." Francine: "You'll be dealing with that solo."
#3 "Edible Panties" S03 E11
Stan really loves his mother,
really loves her. This episode climbs even further up on the creep-o-meter by managing even more uncomfortable?
oh jebus that's creepily wrong in so many ways! I don't know how to better describe this episode than
incredibly
discomforting for viewers. Most of us have heard of those mother's boy types who seem to be a little too close to their mothers.
But Stan manages to take this to a whole new level!
Stan takes this even further by kidnapping his mother's boyfriend,
so that she will always depend on him. In fact, it turns out Stan's been kidnapping all his mother's
Boyfriends for the past 20 years! I guess you could take this one with a laugh,
but it falls far more the creepy than funny for me personally. Each to their own life
But things like Stan telling Francine that she's always second to his mother. It just gets really
uncomfortable. Just my opinion, but I would definitely give this one a skip.
Just a heads up that these final two have a bit more grotesque imagery,
I'll let you know if something particularly bad is coming up.
But just a word of warning these following two episodes rival Family Guy at its absolute
WORST!
With that warning here we go.
#2
" Love AD Style" S08 E01. Watching a bad breakup is pretty bad, but American Dad can top that
How about watching Roger obsess over Hayley the point that he shoots her and tries to perform LIVE SURGERY on her.
skinning her alive, so that he can be
"closer" to her.
There's so much
Gut-wrenching gross-out imagery in this one. To the point where I found myself asking "Who is actually laughing at this?!" is their primary
audience actual stalkers? It starts with Hayley singing at Rogers bar, where he falls in love with her, in that cute Roger way.
This very quickly turns from cute, to creepy, to DOWNRIGHT
TERRIFYING!
Roger: "I'm going to cut off your skin and drape it all over my body!"
Hayley: "HELP!!!"
This is the kind of stalker stuff you'd see in Death Row readouts, rather than comedy sketches.
I must have missed the joke somewhere here! Even the imagery outside Roger's scenes is
disturbing we get scenes like Stan setting fire to a woman while a lion mauls
her. To me anyway this episode wasn't even remotely funny. It was just gross!
Needlessly dark, disturbing, and a little bit terrifying!
Steve: "That's not funny
I guess comedy's really evolved
Thanks Harvard!" Strider: and by far the number one worst American Dad episode is:
"American Fung" S11 E14
I don't know where to start with this episode!
I actually felt traumatized by this one! There was ever even anything
slightly funny about it. This is not just the worst American Dad episode it is among the worst animation
I have ever seen in my life!
Do you laugh at labotomies? I'm gonna hazard a guess you probably don't. It's among the most black,
disturbing, horrifying, mistakes ever conceived by man.
We start the episode off was seth doing an ego jerk off through his Chinese
counterpart, saying he's the funniest comedy in America, and then proceed immediately to stand abducting his wife and sending her to a psych ward.
Okay, and for some reason he then goes on a spending spree with his amex. All right, we watch this
while being
constantly bombarded with ads for what I can assume is a fake Chinese? Business all the time
And this is the moment it goes from a bad episode to the crowning WORST episode. We start
with Francine going insane over her hatred for Stan,
and gets trapped in the psych ward.
okay, how
amazingly unpleasant to watch.
They then begin poking fun at both mentally and physically handicapped it's
impressively
Insulting and off-color even for Seth Macfarlane, Doctor: "and look at her eating your butterscotch pudding like a good girl"
This is the worst,
oh boy is this ugly.
[I] felt physically sick watching them make fun of the mentally handicapped like this,
and then proceeding to assault them! Could he have actually made this more insulting if he tried?
That was off-color in four different ways!
Wow, I I think that's a record and how could this episode get any worse
Surely it couldn't oh
God no
They're not! They're not actually going to! They're actually going to labotomize the two main characters! easy burn
your troubles
Okay, that's it stop the video. I am not subjecting you to this enough, okay?
I'm clearing the air on this the psychosurgery of lobotomy was done only for the cases of extreme
Obsessive-compulsive disorders from years 1949 to 1950 - after that date it was never done again the American psychological
Association established a code of ethics
decades ago
so things like this never happened again in a professional setting.
Only someone who had put zero thought into it, would have put this on TV. Oh
Then to top it all off we get an infomercial that lasts for the final three minutes of the video
But by this point. I was practically comatose with traumas, so I-I didn't even care
I couldn't get the image of that drill, or Stan being lobotomized on my head!
I don't have the words to properly express this one. This is among the most insulting,
revolting, animation I have ever seen in my life.
I've got to be honest, I didn't think any episode could top Family Guys Brian's a Bad Father
But American Fung comes very close.
Instructing kids on suicide is still worse, but this one turned my stomach! I
didn't laugh once at this!
It is just a revolting, ugly, thoughtless episode made with purely the intent to annoy people.
Do not watch this episode, it does not deserve the traffic.
Critics hated it, fans hated it, I absolutely loathe it. It's just got to be forgotten.
Despite these kind of moments. they're actually really rare. Honestly, for every bad episode
I found I found five incredible new episodes!
I could have made another top ten list purely from what I found from season seven to ten, and these
Fantastic episodes made me realize something
American Dad serves a role that no other show can do. There is no other animated show
I know of out there that could talk about controversial subjects with a blase and laughs they do, and
Sometimes when they put these subjects in relatively good taste, you get something really amazing!
what other animated show out there could do an entire song and dance number to people's sexual preferences?
Generally American Dad excels itself far above family guy in so many ways, it has intelligence
Touchy moments and much more likeable characters, and at the end of the day
There's way more positives to this show than negatives. Do you have a least favorite episode yourself?
did I miss particularly bad one? Let me know in the comments as
always thanks for watching! and I'll see you next time.
Why can't I leave things nice?