‘Family Guy’s Dean Cain Joke Is Aging Like a Fine Wine
Loads of Family Guy jokes haven’t aged well over the years. In fact, some might argue that certain jokes aged terribly before they ever made it to the air. But one brief gag about a certain ex-TV star continues to be more relevant than ever.
No, not the one about Bob Ross threatening to murder people.
As we’ve mentioned before, now that there’s a new Superman movie, a lot of news outlets have been speaking with ex-Man of Steel Dean Cain. The star of TV’s Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman recently told TMZ that the character had gone “woke,” complaining Superman no longer brags about enforcing the “American way” while also arguing that the 2025 Superman shouldn’t have used the familiar superhero story as an allegory for immigration.
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Those dumb statements seemed especially dumb once people started sharing clips of Cain’s Superman on social media, specifically the ones in which he’s hassled by government immigration officials due to his undocumented status, and another that found him complaining to Lois Lane about a presidential candidate’s racist dogwhistle promise to make the country “great again.”
Now Cain is back in the news because he’s still complaining about the Superman movie that he hasn’t actually seen yet. “James Gunn and his decision to make Ma and Pa Kent the stupid rednecks. That’s a choice,” Cain recently told Variety. “And Superman has to be saved, like, repeatedly? On a movie this size, every decision is a choice made carefully.”
If only there was a clip from Lois & Clark that could deflate Cain’s “Superman doesn’t need saving” argument…
There might even be more than one…
Cain also noted that DC Studios co-head Peter Safran is “a Princeton guy” like him. “But he’s never hired me,” the Airplane vs. Volcano star joked.
Following Cain’s most recent interview, which came after an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, an old clip from Family Guy went viral. At one point during Season Six’s “Peter’s Daughter,” Peter Griffin worries that a flood might damage his “autographed picture of Dean Cain” — but he clarifies that it was from “before he got all desperate for attention.”
The show then cuts to Cain, sitting in park, pretending that he’s put-out by attention from a nonexistent fan. Oh, and he’s wearing a Superman T-shirt.
Now that Cain seems to be on a media tour purely to promote his criticisms of a movie he’s not actually involved with, and hasn’t bothered to watch, the show’s depiction does seem to be pretty accurate.
Good job manatees!
