First Impressions: Dads ‘Pilot’ – Our Special Relationship

As a show about four reprehensible human beings with no desire whatsoever to grow as human beings, there doesn’t seem to be much reason for Dads to exist. Well, one: to give Seth McFarlane another venue to peddle his repetitive string of misogynistic and/or racist jokes that still manages to draw millions of viewers a week. There’s no improvement in the writing of this live version of Family Guy without the cutaways – creators Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild construct a series of unrelated, unfunny scenes together to introduce to their world, a world where women do what they’re told, and men don’t ever have to be responsible or mature about anything in the world. 

Dads centers around Warner (Giovanni Ribisi) and Eli (Seth Green), two video game designers (who are richer than 99.9% of all video game designers, one of a million inauthentic “human” touches to the show) whose horrible fathers show up in their lives, causing predictable “hilarity” and mayhem. That mayhem involves Warner’s father Crawford (Martin Mull) ruins a business deal with Chinese investors, and Eli’s father showing up to spend his son’s birthday with him, even though he insists on being an asshole the entire time about it (he didn’t even know it was his son’s surprise party, begging the question why he showed up in town in the first place).

The worst part? That Dads doesn’t really even try to find a place of connection and possible growth for these two father/son combinations: a limp, tacked-on conclusion that isn’t even fleshed out enough to be a believable emotional hook lasts about ten seconds, then it’s back to small Asian penis jokes in a disturbing sub-plot that involves our two protagonists demanding that their female co-worker dress like an Asian sexy schoolgirl – which she does, because it’s the only discernible way for her to get a promotion, of course. But who needs believable, likable human characters when we can laugh at how disturbingly unhealthy these two father/son relationships are – and joke about the size of an Asian man’s penis?

In fact, Dads goes out of its way to find racist jokes to ignore the inherent problems with its conception (seriously: having four asshole main characters does not a good show make), having one character yell out “Punch the Puerto Rican!” as a possible title for a boxing game we don’t even see a screenshot for. And with that – and “old people are goofy” jokes – as the only driving factors for the show’s humor, there isn’t really anything to see, laugh at, or even mildly enjoy with Dads (which doesn’t get any better with its gross racism in the second episode, either). Remove those two types of humor, and there isn’t even a plot left to Dads: just Seth Green desperately prancing around like a stage monkey, begging people to laugh at the two poor attempts at physical humor the show gives him (both of which carry on far too long for their own good). That’s Dads in a nutshell: it’s a “bro” comedy for the dumbest of bros, those who like their women easy and stupid, and their jokes simple, broad, and endlessly repetitive.

Grade: F

Dads

Airs Tuesday nights at 8pm beginning 9/17

Created & written by Alec Sulkin & Wellesley Wild

Pilot director: Mark Cendrowski