#American dad roger meme serial

“Or I’ll see to it that all you little rascals are drafted.”).

You may not find any child molestation jokes or crass religious cracks in Roger Ramjet, but for 1965 the lightning-fast humor was pretty hepcat and sophisticated, with undisguised satirical references to the Cold War, Central American turmoil, and the Vietnam War (“Hey kids, this is Roger Ramjet, demanding that you stay tuned to this station to see my next adventure,” Roger announces in his commanding superhero baritone. Along with the lo-fi stylistics, the humor was clearly aimed at an adult audience while pretending otherwise. Looking at it today what it reminds me of more than anything are the paper cutout animations of the earliest episodes of South Park. People who thought Jay Ward’s Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right were crude when compared with the output from Disney or Warner Brothers had no idea what “crude” meant.

#American dad roger meme serial

The shows were so primitive they hardly bothered with niceties like “backgrounds” satisfied instead to settle for rudimentary suggestions of a setting.īut the writing was so sharp and the voice talent so good, that what it really felt like (if you paid attention) was a spoof of a ‘40s radio serial like Sky King or Gangbusters, complete with a soap opera organ and illustrated by a handful of jerky drawings scratched out by someone’s kid. The episodes were only five minutes long (maybe seven with the abrasive theme song filling out the opening and closing credits), and were so crudely drawn and animated it might at a glance seem like something a couple of junior high school kids threw together in their basement one weekend. The show was easy to overlook, especially when squeezed between the Beatles and some secret agent chimps with a psychedelic band. After catching one or two episodes, I forgot all about Lancelot Link. He was square-jawed, straitlaced, straightfaced, and True Blue if little else (the resemblance to American Dad’s Stan is remarkable), so hyperpatriotic that nearly every time his name is spoken aloud an American flag, a bald eagle, or a rotating ring of stars appears on the screen. Roger Ramjet, “that All-American good guy and devil may care flying fool” (as he compulsively introduces himself) was a none too bright and none too coordinated drug-dependent space age superhero in an ongoing battle against the assorted forces of evil (or more specifically, N.A.S.T.Y.) to preserve the American Way of Life.