Sundays With Seth: Christmas and the Rapture

This week may have featured our first Christmas with the Brown family over on The Cleveland Show, which would have normally been enough to elevate it to the top MacFarlane show of the night. But American Dad took itself someplace so bizarre with its Christmas special, that I spent most of it stunned that I was even watching American Dad.

Of the three shows, Dad was always the one that stayed with the characters and avoided trips into fantasy. Wacky asides and over-the-top shenanigans are a staple of Family Guy and have proven a smaller, but still important, part of The Cleveland Show. So I was left with my jaw hanging open when the Rapture kicked in and people started flying off to heaven.

Admittedly, I've not seen every episode of American Dad, so maybe this isn't as surprising an episode as I thought it was. It was, however, a simply fantastic episode.

When American Dad returns, it will be in the 16:9 high-definition format for the first time. After getting a look at some of the beautifully dense animation used to show us the aftermath of the Rapture and the seven year war on Earth, I really wish this episode had been the one they made the switch with. The imagery of the angels and demons would have looked absolutely stunning, and the widescreen display would have added to the epic scale of the war.

In the end, "Rapture's Delight" was one of those episodes where everything winds up exactly where it began, depending on how you interpret the ending. If it's a reset of Stan's life, so he can relive it again, then does that mean Klaus will now be dead in future episodes? Of course, I say that knowing that continuity in animation is a slippery slope to begin with.

I'd imagine this episode will be met with plenty of controversy, for their portrayal of Francine and Jesus having a relationship among many other things, but I still found myself laughing at Roger's hysteria over Christianity. Looking at it from his very outside perspective, as an alien in the truest sense of the word, the whole thing must seem as equally ridiculous as any of our science fiction and fantasy premises.

Shocker to him, and everyone, that it all turned out to be real. I was a little disappointed to see the minister left behind along with the sinners. I think it's become a bit cliche to have the religious leader turn out to be a faithless fraud. Regardless, though, I would have loved to have seen those missing seven years. This could have easily been an hour or more and held my attention rapturously throughout.

We did get the first Christmas at the Brown house, on The Cleveland Show, and after a disastrous turn as Santa Claus at his company Christmas party, Cleveland set out to make things right with Rallo by finding his deadbeat dad. I've heard of lying to your kids to make yourself look better, but Rallo and Roberta's father took that to a whole new level.

Maybe because I'm used to how much can get packed into an episode of Family Guy or American Dad, but "A Cleveland Brown Christmas" felt a little light to me. Or maybe it's just because I wanted to see some of those traditional holiday moments, like the family sitting around the dinner table for a Christmas meal. At least we got a dejected Rallo opening the slinky he wanted before Cleveland-Santa crushed his spirits.

In true Cleveland fashion, this episode was framed a lot like those classic family sitcoms of yesteryear, but with much more crass and disturbing undertones. Cleveland's flashback to his Christmas at Herbert's house (from Family Guy) was pretty high on the creepy scale, but so was his bizarre rubbing of Cleveland, Jr.'s face. Not to mention the trip to the strip club.

But that was nothing compared to the trip to the strip club that led to Mr. Pewterschmidt's heart attack. Talk about graphic animation!

The heart attack led to Peter taking over the company, and yet there was no indication that he drove it into the toilet. In fact, it seemed to be doing fine on his watch, even if the power did go to his head. At on point he even threatened to "fire" Lois, reminding her what happened with Lacey Chabert (the first voice of Meg, before Mila Kunis). I love little inside jokes that reward faithful viewers like that. It pulls you in and makes you feel like you're part of the family.

The episode also featured a return appearance by Hugh Laurie as Dr. House, as well as Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki reprising their roles from The Big Bang Theory. I couldn't tell if Peter forcing Carter to hold viewing parties for Big Bang was supposed to be a knock on that show, or just a tribute to it. At first, no one was interested, and the show was mocked for their geeky and scientific humor. By the end, though Carter admitted he'd grown to like it.

The highlight of the episode, for me, came when the Scooby-Doo music kicked in and the swamp monster chased Lois and Cater through the building, before ultimately being unmasked as ... Hugh Laurie. It was just bizarre enough and nostalgic enough to be a flash of satiric brilliance.

[Catch up over the holidays with clips and full episodes of American Dad, The Cleveland Show and Family Guy on SlashControl.]