Prime Video TV Review: ‘#1 Happy Family USA’ is a Clever Retrospective Look at Fitting In After 9/11

Ramy Youssef’s Hulu series Ramy, which premiered at SXSW six years ago, offered an alternately stark, alternately funny look at what it’s like to be a Muslim in modern-day America. Youssef feels distinctly qualified to go back further to the experience of being an American Muslim in the wake of September 11^th, 2001 and he has an excellent partner for his latest project, Pam Brady, whose work in animated fare like South Park makes her the perfect person to collaborate with for Prime Video’s animated series #1 Happy Family USA.

This comedy series begins on September 10^th with the Hussein family living in New Jersey. Rumi (Youssef) is a kid who fits in well enough at school and has a major crush on his teacher. His sister Mona (Alia Shawkat) is a lesbian and has hatched a plan with her girlfriend for them both to come out the next day on 9/11. Their father Hussein (also Youssef) has a halal cart and is planning to expand the business, while Sharia (Salma Hindy) and Grandma (Randa Jarrar) both express different levels of visible religious practice. An unexpected death finds them in the Delta airport lounge when the Twin Towers are hit, forever challenging their reality and forcing them to adjust to a very different America.

This is the kind of show that surely couldn’t have been made immediately in the wake of the September 11^th attacks, especially because there wasn’t much to laugh about given how so many people were racially profiled and years of international war persisted as a result. It’s still no laughing matter for some audiences, but those who have welcomed Ramy, Mo, and other more evolved interpretations than Team America: World Police will surely appreciate this show and its reflective humor that sends up the closemindedness of those who either don’t want to understand or try far too hard to understand.

That radical shift is represented in comedic ways, like Rumi’s teacher also saying his last name whenever she calls on him starting on September 11^th and adding more gravity to his project about Egypt that suddenly carries more weight since he’s this mystic and potentially dangerous foreigner. The animated format allows for some visual gags, like Hussein shaving his beard and it immediately growing back, negating his efforts not to look just like the hijackers pictured on the news. Rumi’s classmate talking to him about the importance of codeswitching based on the surrounding audience is portrayed visually but speaks to the underlying seriousness of this surface-level comedy series. The talking lamb that’s almost begging to be sacrificed lives somewhere in the middle, connecting back to the antiquated nature of certain religious customs and how they can still be meaningful even in the present day.

Youssef has found an audience with Ramy and his stand-up comedy that will surely follow him here, and the pacing and energy of this show will also appeal to fans of animated comedies traditionally found on FOX. This series doesn’t push every boundary it possibly could but comes close, unafraid of being politically incorrect because its entire purpose is to poke fun at political correctness and its misguided consequences for those merely trying to exist. This show’s title is its best descriptor, pointing to this family’s ardent efforts to simply blend in and appear patriotic when they’re judged by their looks and not by their actions. Conceiving of this in an animated comedy setting is a clever concept, the latest culture to be explored in this way that will surely appeal to those who have lived through it and help both entertain and enlighten those who can’t quite relate.

Series Rating: 7/10