Info:
DVD Release Date: April 25, 2006 (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
Color
MSRP: $39.98
Number of Discs: 3
Number of Episodes: 13
Running Time: approx. 284 minutes
Running Time of Special Features: approximately 150
minutes (plus commentaries)
Languages, Subtitles, Closed Captioning: English;
English, Spanish, and French Subtitles; Closed
Captioned
Special Features: Commentaries on 12 episodes; "All in
the Family: Creating American Dad!" featurette;
"Secrets of the Glass Booth: Behind The Voices of
American Dad!" featurette; "American Animatics"
featurette; Deleted Scenes from all 13 episodes; "The
New CIA" promo; 2005 Super Bowl Pre-Game Promo;
Animatics and Table Read for "Threat Levels"
Introduction:
By now, everybody knows the story about Family Guy,
about how it was canceled and brought back years
later. In between the cancellation and subsequent
reprisal, creator Seth MacFarlane, having nothing
better to do (and assuming Family Guy was totally dead
by then) decided to create another show: American
Dad!, and now, the first 13 episodes are on DVD.
Ever wonder what All in the Family would be like if it
took place in the modern world? That is kind of what
American Dad! is. Seth MacFarlane, who clearly enjoys
doing the voices of the main character and others in
every show that he creates, plays the voice of Stan
Smith, a pro-George W. Bush CIA agent who is out to
catch the terrorists--which in his opinion, includes
everybody that isn't exactly like him. At home, he has
a very mixed family, including his Edith Bunker-esque
wife Francine (who was a party girl before she married
him), his liberal daughter that hates EVERYTHING he
stands for, Hayley, and his son, Steve. And that is
just the human characters! Rounding out the family at
home is Klaus, the goldfish with the German accent,
and Roger, the extremely--we will just say
"flamboyant"--alien that Stan personally rescued from
being murdered.
Memorable Episodes / Notable Guest Stars:
The set begins with the first episode, where Steve
wants to win a student president election just to get
girls, and Stan, knowing every single detail about how
to steal elections, decides to give him a little bit
of help! Francine decides to become a real estate
agent in "Threat Levels," which Stan is fine with, until he
discovers that a real estate agent makes more money
than he ever will! Hayley becomes a stripper to
support herself in "Stan Knows Best." Stan decides to
wipe out Francine's memory after he forgets her
anniversary in "Francine's Flashback," but Francine is
accidentally taken back 20 years instead of one day!
On Disc 2, Jason Marsden plays the voice of an elderly
woman that Roger becomes friends with (after Stan
throws him in a landfill...) in "Roger Codger."
Francine wants friends in the neighborhood, and Stan
is okay with it--until he discovers the new neighbors
are Iranian and decides to detain them in "Homeland
Insecurity." In "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man," Stan enlists
the help of Karl Rove to become deacon of his church,
but his plans are somewhat thwarted when the least
likely person in the family gets pregnant! Hayley is
sleeping with Stan's boss in "Bullocks to Stan."
Finally, on Disc 3, Stan accidentally discovers--we
will just say "self-pleasure"--after calling a surgeon
that is work Dick Cheney and misinterpreting his
medical advice in "A Smith in the Hand." Stan wants to
prove to his co-workers how masculine Steve is in "All
About Steve," but decides the best way to prove it is
to basically disown him. In "Con Heir," we meet Stan's
father--or is he REALLY Stan's father? Finally, the
DVD set ends with the two-parter, "Stan of Arabia,"
where Stan is reassigned to work in Saudi Arabia after
ruining his boss' party, but despite initial
unhappiness about the reassignment, he quickly
discovers that his beliefs and values fit in perfectly
with the culture of Saudi Arabia and decides that
Saudi Arabia is the perfect place to raise a family!
Packaging:
They did an excellent job with the packaging. The
cover has a nice picture of the family standing in
front of the American flag. On the back of the outer
box is a picture of Stan all ready for the
terrorists--in his underwear. The DVDs themselves are
in slim cases. The case for Disc 1 has a picture of
Stan and Francine, the case for Disc 2 has Hayley and
Steve, and Disc 3 has Roger and Klaus. On the back of
each case, there is a listing of all of the episodes
on the set--presented in a "CIA file" style, with
episode descriptions, airdates, and commentary
information included, and a "file folder" that
explains which scenes you can select from. Each disc
is single-sided, and has the same picture on it that
the slim case for the disc has on it. Episodes 1-4 are
on Disc 1, 5-8 are on Disc 2, and 9-13 are on Disc 3.
Menu Design and Navigation:
These remind me of the Family Guy menus in a lot of
ways. The main menu has the closing music playing in
the background, and in the middle of the screen, there
are brief video clips from various episodes
playing--seems familiar to those with Family Guy DVDs!
You can select the episode you want, or Play All from
the Main Menu. Of course, Disc 3 also has the Special
Features Option. On the Episode Selection menu, you
can choose from Play, Scene Selection, Language
Selection, or Commentary. Scene Selection allows you
to start the episode from five different points in
each episode, and of course, there are chapters
located at all of the appropriate spots as well.
Video and Audio Quality:
This is a new show, and the oldest episode on the set
is barely over a year old, so as one might expect,
video and audio quality is great on the set, there is
not a thing to complain about. The audio is presented
in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound, and additionally,
you can choose English, Spanish, or French subtitles,
as well as watch the episodes using closed-captioning.
Special Features:
They did a very good job with special features for the
show! First of all, of the 13 episodes included, 12 of
them have commentary tracks! The only thing that
doesn't make sense is why they didn't include
commentary on the other one. Although I didn't listen
to EVERY commentary track, the ones I did listen to
were full of information and there were few moments
where the commentators were silent.
But there is more than just commentaries! There are
several featurettes, beginning with "All in the
Family: Creating American Dad" (20:33): This is just a
featurette that discusses the show in general and how
it began, including interviews with Mike Barker, Matt
Weitzman, Seth MacFarlane, Dee Bradley Baker, Rachael
MacFarlane, Wendy Schall, Scott Grimes. There is also
a "Secrets of the Glass Booth" featurette (5:31) that
talks about doing the voices on the show, but a lot of
the material in this featurette is repeated in the
"All in the Family: Creating American Dad" featurette.
If you want to actually see the voice work in action,
there is plenty of that. You can watch "How's Your
Aspen?: American Dad Performance at HBO's 2005 US
Comedy Arts Festival" (25:46), a featurette where the
actors are doing a live table read for the episode
"Smith in the Hand." There is even a featurette that
goes through a 40 minute table read from the episode
"Threat Levels" while watching the animatic.
Want deleted scenes? There are deleted scenes from
EVERY episode included! There is a total of 17 minutes
worth of deleted scenes, including 42 separate scenes!
You can watch them individually or you can select Play
All. The only thing missing is they don't allow you an
option of watching these at the time that they would
have aired, as is done on The Simpsons releases. There
is a "The New CIA Promo" featurette (3:08), which is a
fake promo for the CIA with Stan Smith as the star of
the commercial. I'm not sure what purpose this was to
serve, but it is kind of interesting to see anyway.
There is a "2005 Super Bowl Pre-Game Promo," (1:35),
which aired before the Super Bowl to promote the show
(which aired later that night). For those that enjoy
animatics (and honestly, I'm kind of annoyed by them
after the seemingly nonstop animatics of the releases
of The Simpsons), there are plenty of them... 14
minutes worth... from various episodes. There is also
a promo for Family Guy (0:33), but it is hardly a
special feature.
Final Comments:
This is a very good show and a very good set--it is
nice to see that American Dad! is already off to a
great start with the very first set! Hopefully future
releases will be just as good. What I don't understand
is why they didn't include episodes 14-19 on this
release. Those episodes have already aired on Fox, and for
$39.98, it would make sense to include those. It seems
like they have done the same thing with this that they
did with Family Guy Volume 3 (including such a low
number of episodes). It is difficult to tell at this
point in time how long American Dad! will be around,
as it isn't an incredibly successful show (but at the
same time isn't exactly a ratings disaster either),
but it is obvious that the creators see this show as
'less of a show" than their other show, Family Guy.
Seth MacFarlane sometimes seemed to be confused about
details of this show even, which is not the case with
him when he is discussing Family Guy. So pick up this
DVD set--and if you don't, you'll be reported to the
CIA for being a terrorist!
Final Numbers (out of 5 stars - How our point system works)
Video Quality: 5/5
Audio Quality: 5/5
Special Features: 4/5
Menu Design/Navigation: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5
-- Reviewed by skees53 on 04/22/06
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