10 American Dad Episodes That Pissed People Off
1. Homeland Insecurity (S1E6)
When American Dad! first debuted in 2005, it was Seth MacFarlane’s satirical take on post-9/11 paranoia in America. Stan Smith worked at the CIA, and was a caricature of an extreme right Republican sitting on edge waiting for the next terrorist attack.
Though he evolved to be much more than this over the years, this was typically the limit of his character in the early days. The show always played close to the line with this concept, but ‘Homeland Insecurities’ took it way too far.
When Bob and Linda Memari moved into the Smith’s neighbourhood in just the sixth episode of the series, Stan devolved from someone on terror alert to an outright racist. He assumed that just because they were Iranian that they were terrorists, and presented a real bomb threat to his family.
He threw away the food they brought to Francine’s party, spied on them for proof despite having no real reason to actually suspect them, and imprisoned them in his own back yard. This just wasn’t funny, and was incredibly offensive, even for Stan.