REVIEW: ‘#1 Happy Family USA’ Is Ramy Youssef At His Best

Ramy Youssef has become a television staple, from his eponymous Hulu series Ramy to his work on Netflix and A24’s Mo. Now, he’s working with Prime Video to bring #1 Happy Family USA to audiences. Stretching his writing muscle into adult animation, this aggressive, irreverent, and satirical new series takes cues from Youssef’s life and blows them up.

Youssef takes his experiences and makes them hyperbolic in the only way that adult animation can. Taking notes from The Boondocks, American Dad, and F is for Family, it tells the stories of the Egyptian-American family, the Husseins. The series begins on September 10, 2001, with the death of protagonist Rumi’s (Ramy Youssef) grandfather (Azhar Usman). Then, of course, the maniacally upbeat Husseins have to deal with what happens the next day in a post-9/11 America as a Muslim family.

The series hones in on the push for immigrants to assimilate, and in the case of Arab and Muslim families in the wake of 2001 and the Patriot Act, to be the most patriotic family on their block. With satire and absurdity, it redefines finding humor in hardship as they navigate the early 2000s under the watchful eyes of the FBI.

#1 Happy Family USA is one of the few times I’ve seen an adult animated series this bold, loud, and hyperbolic. Ramy Youssef isn’t concerned with making a universal series; he is telling a particular story of fear, anger, and generational trauma that happened to his family and other Arab communities after 9/11 in the only way a lot of Americans will listen, through comedy. As much as Youssef’s script takes shots at the government and the racists we know, it also puts well-meaning white people in that line too.

#1 Happy Family USA captures why we all tell dark jokes.

Comedy gives us the language to highlight our pain and to do so in a way that makes light of the indignities we face. But writers can only do that when they deeply understand what’s lying underneath. One of the best examples throughout the series is Rumi’s relationship with his father and the Cousin Leaderboard.

At the beginning of every episode, we see the opening credits where the Husseins sing and dance to prove to everyone on the block that they aren’t terrorists but just a very happy and normal American family. As the FBI rushes onto their lawn and they all go to the ground, Rumi’s father lifts his son and says, “Take the boy.”

It’s tongue-in-cheek for sure, but for anyone whose parents’ love language was criticism, it’s a loud siren. Throughout #1 Happy Family USA, Rumi’s father comments on how he has to hate his son more in order for his son to succeed. And ultimately, Rumi’s standing so low on the Cousin Leaderboard, a board where the Husseins compare all of the cousins in the family with their children, makes his father treat him even more coldly.

But that doesn’t mean that patriarch Hussein Hussein (Ramy Youssef) doesn’t care about his family; he just has no other way of showing them that he cares for them. For Hussiein, coming to the United States and living the perfect American Dream gives them love. Working on his Halal Cart is loving them. Yelling at them is loving them.

Immigrant dads are central to Ramy Youssef’s comedy.

But for all the sentimentality, including a hashish trip between Mona (Alia Shawkat), Rumi’s closeted lesbian sister, and her grandmother (Randa Jarrar), the series also uses pure comedic elements. The coked-out FBI agent surveilling their house, George W. Bush chatting in an AIM chat room, Rumi’s complete fear of being shipped to Guantanamo Bay because he pirated music, all of these smaller comedic bits do a lot of heavy lifting to bring levity into the #1 Happy Family USA’s darkest moments.

Ramy Youssef knows how to make people uncomfortable. Better yet, the series creator understands what it takes to make people laugh, make people clench their teeth, and make them question if they’re the problem all in one moment. Throughout the series, red text will appear on the scene to highlight that an absurdity may be hyperbolic, but it was something that happened. This constantly keeps the temperature check on the audience and doesn’t allow them to misconstrue what Youssef is doing with his storytelling.

While I believe that Youssef has no intention of letting anyone feel comfortable or getting close to telling a universal story, some moments land loud and clear. One of these is the code-switching bit that runs throughout #1 Happy Family USA. Right after 9/11, the Husseins attended a vigil for a neighbor’s grandpa who died in the attack.

When they go to the vigil, Hussein decides to take his role as the family patriarch to make the most significant showing of American pride that he can. He decks his cart out in red, white, and blue; he wears those colors too, and changes how he talks. He does what he knows white people want to see so that they can view him as “one of the good ones”— a thread #1 Happy Family USA keeps pulling at.

#1 Happy Family USA isn’t trying to please everyone, and that’s why it works.

At the same time, Rumi meets his friend Marcus’ family. When Rumi asks him why his family looks like the Cosbys, Marcus (Chris Reed) responds with codeswitching and understanding what makes white people feel safe. From there, Rumi tries to be everything for everyone until he overloads and winds up showing everyone his real self and being hated for it. The codeswitching element of the series is brought through in nearly every episode, and soon, Rumi realizes that everyone around him is doing it and that his sister is the best among them.

#1 Happy Family USA is going to make a lot of people angry, and I don’t even mean white people. The series is a pointed look at America, the assimilation that immigrants force on their kids to get farther ahead, the inequities that exist in families, and ultimately highlights just how bad things have been since the Patriot Act decided no one, and especially Arab-Americans and Muslims, have any right to privacy.

Add in the times that we are living in now, where people are being rounded up and deported simply for having any sort of tattoo, and it’s clear we haven’t learned anything. And perhaps that’s the real genius of #1 Happy Family USA and Ramy Youssef’s signature brand of aggressively uncomfortable humor. This isn’t the first time this country has rounded up people and disappeared them, and every generation keeps realizing theirs wasn’t the last. It just takes time for the media to meet it with such aggressive condemnation instead of just something regretful.

#1 Happy Family USA is rough around the edges, but love it or not, it’s a rare occasion where an adult animation has swung for the offensive fences with a message larger than shock value. And because of that, this Prime Video series may just be Ramy Youssef’s best work.

#1 Happy Family USA is streaming now on Prime Video.