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"So it&amp;#039;s fair to say that the early critical buzz for Dads was not good. The new Fox sitcom - from Ted team Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild - was branded &amp;#039;racist&amp;#039; by a media watchdog an entire month before it had even hit US screens... Fox responded in combative mode, releasing a series promo that essentially stuck up a middle finger to watchdogs and critics - snooty types might not like it, we were told, but real honest-to-goodness Joe Public does!  But who&amp;#039;s right? Is Dads just inoffensive silliness or morally questionable tripe?  For this pilot episode&amp;#039;s first six minutes, you suspect that the whole controversy might have been a storm in a teacup. Sure, Dads isn&amp;#039;t groundbreaking and relies on tried-and-tested tropes - old people are funny, naked old people are funnier still and crucially young people are different to old people - but it seems like a harmless enough family sitcom. The show&amp;#039;s not entirely devoid of chuckles either, with a talented cast making the best of tired material - both Eli (Seth Green) randomly texting his Dad the word &amp;quot;No&amp;quot; and Warner (Giovanni Ribisi) beating a retreat from his angry wife raised a smile. Then Brenda Song arrives and it all goes so very. very wrong. Song&amp;#039;s not at fault - check out her recent stint on New Girl if you want to see what she&amp;#039;s capable of in a decent sitcom - but you know you&amp;#039;re on shaky ground when her character Veronica&amp;#039;s very first line is: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re lucky your dads are American - my dad beat me with a math book &amp;#039;til I was 16.&amp;quot;  Yep, it&amp;#039;s great to be American and, oh yes, Chinese people love maths... but it only gets worse, as Eli and Warner force their colleague to dress her up as a &amp;quot;sexy Asian schoolgirl&amp;quot; to be leered over by some Chinese investors - now you&amp;#039;ve got sexism and racism in one big dollop of &amp;#039;comedy&amp;#039;. From this point, the &amp;#039;jokes&amp;#039; keep on coming, as if writers Sulkin and Wild are ticking off a checklist - the Chinese are tight with money, of course (&amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s a reason Shanghai&amp;#039;s a verb!&amp;quot;) and, preserve my sides, have small genitals. At least Dads practices equal opportunity discrimination, as there&amp;#039;s ill-judged jibes about Shi&amp;#039;ite Muslims, Latinos and Puerto Ricans to go along with the bashing of the &amp;quot;Orientals&amp;quot;.  All in all, these dubious scenes actually take up a relatively small part of the Dads pilot, but the fact remains that they don&amp;#039;t belong in a comedy show airing in 2013 at all. You couldn&amp;#039;t get away with airing Love Thy Neighbour or Mind Your Language in the 21st century, and you shouldn&amp;#039;t be allowed to get away with this either. It&amp;#039;s a shame that the team behind Dads feel the need to resort to such worn-out, questionable gags. With a strong cast - better than the material currently on offer deserves - they could have a passable sitcom half-hour on their hands if they were to cut back on the 1970s humour.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/news/a516314/dads-review-is-controversial-sitcom-racist-or-good-clean-fun/>