10 TV Shows That MOCKED Their Rivals
4. American Dad Mocked 24
There’s an academic argument to be made that, by centring
a hyper-patriotic CIA agent as an all American everyman and a heroic
protagonist whose questionable actions never see him face accountability, the
entire original premise of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy follow up American Dad
is a parody of 24’s post 9/11 inherently pro-US agenda. But we’re not writing an
essay and the show has largely abandoned the CIA satire angle in, well, the last
ten of its fifteen seasons in favour of more broadly surreal comedy, so we’ll
limit this entry to a single and pretty brilliant instance.
In the first season’s Threat Levels, Stan accidentally contaminates his family home with a deadly virus, prompting his employers to quarantine the house for twenty four hours—prompting Stan to sit his family down and spend what may be his last twenty four hours on earth watching the entire first season of 24.
It’s a lot less touching than Homer Simpson’s twenty four hour brush with death upon consuming a tainted pufferfish, but at least the spoof wasn’t as brutal to poor 24 as The Boondock’s scathing parody It’s Goin’ Down.