A paranoid CIA operative. His loving wife. A talking German goldfish with a primal urge to get "unten und schmutzig" with said CIA operative's loving wife.

Sounding like an ingenious cast for a new hit cartoon series yet? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

I sat down Super Bowl Sunday to view what I had heard was a fairly worthy follow up series to Seth MacFarlane's smash hit TV show Family Guy, a show patriotically titled American Dad. I honestly wasn't expecting something extremely similar to Family Guy, although the animation looked somewhat alike and that MacFarlane also created this show.

Was I wrong? Basically, yeah.

The show revolves around Stan Smith (the trigger-happy father of the family), Francine Smith (Stan's ex-druggie wife), Stan's daughter Hayley (teenage left-winger of the family), son Steve (stereotypical dork who just can't quite hit puberty), an alien named Roger (whose body spontaneously expels brown fluid every 7 hours), and a pet goldfish named Klaus (apparently we're supposed to believe his brain was switched with a human's during a CIA experiment).

From the cheesy intro song ("The sun in the sky has a smile on his face! And he's shinin' a salute to the American race!") to the uncanny Family Guy-like characters, MacFarlane seems to have ripped off his own hit series. But everyone knows a rip-off, legal or not, almost always fails where the original succeeded.

Stan Smith may be all about values and his family, but underneath the smooth deep voice and finely tailored government suit is a familiar character. With every joke where Stan pokes fun at (insert funny or controversial pop culture icon here), he reminds us of the man many know and love as Peter Griffin, main character from, guess where? Family Guy.

The pilot episode revolves around how Stan's son Steve is trying to pick up girls, so Stan decides to put a bit of his CIA skills to good use to make Steve popular.

The episode had its moments. A phone conversation between George W. Bush and God made me laugh out loud, and Roger had some fairly hilarious lines, but much of the show left me shaking my head at how sadly similar the formula of Family Guy is to American Dad.

The whole half-hour episode seemed somewhat incoherent as well (of course, this may be because it was a "series preview," as stated by FOX before the show). The debut episode will air again this Sunday at 11:30 p.m. on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming. The show's actual season starts on May 1, the same day Family Guy makes its return to network TV.

Besides the fact the hit show Family Guy will be back for new episodes starting in May, I just got wind of the fact that MacFarlane is planning a direct-to-DVD movie for Family Guy in which Stewie discovers he's gay and finds out that Peter isn't his real father.

This information alone made me more excited than anything that American Dad ever offered up in its debut episode.

Has MacFarlane simply created a show in Family Guy that he just won't be able to top (think how Futurama paled in comparison to The Simpsons in the ratings)?

It's possible.

There's one cartoon I'll definitely be catching on May 1, containing a crazy yet lovable father, who gets his eccentric family into hilarious situations that aim to offend one group or another.

Take a guess which one it'll be.