Ramy Youssef's #1 Happy Family USA Is a 21st Century Coming-of-Age Sitcom

Listen to this article

When a new work of art has a certain relevancy to the front page of the day’s newspaper, it is often too easy to get lost in drawing connections—or in commenting on how a work meets the moment, celebrating the foresight and serendipity of something that seems to speak directly to the zeitgeist. #1 Happy Family USA is one such work.

Sometimes the possibility that a show’s greatness would be true regardless of its prophetic nature gets lost in that praise. Because as #1 Happy Family USA (set in the days after September 11, 2001 and pitched at the end of the first Trump term) demonstrates, the fascistic targeting of immigrants today is but another chapter in the American tradition of racism and xenophobic hate.

Co-created and -written by Ramy Youssef and South Park veteran Pam Brady, the animated sitcom begins on September 10, 2001. Rumi Hussein (Youssef) lives the typical life of a New Jersey middle-schooler in the early 2000s: he is obsessed with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls (though he wears a knock off jersey that says “Balls”), frets over a school project he must deliver on Egypt (the country from which his family is from), and crushes on his teacher, Mrs. Malcolm (Mandy Moore).

We also get pre-9/11 introductions to the rest of the family. Rumi’s father, Hussein Hussein (also voiced by Youssef), is a trained doctor, but after immigrating operates a Halal cart near Rockefeller Center (outside the News Corp. building), which he proudly shows off to the recently arrived and cheery Uncle Ahmed (Paul Elia). His mother, Sharon (Salma Hindy), works at a dentist’s office and still actively grieves Princess Diana. Rumi’s older sister, Mona (Alia Shawkat), is a high schooler with a secret girlfriend. They plan to both publicly come out the next day, as they were born on the 9th and 11th respectively.

Most Popular

The first episode of the series is a mad dash to introduce all of these characters (and more) to set the stage for what is to come. Once the date is made clear, a devastating dichotomy ensues, as the family gets lost in the generally chaotic minutiae of the everyday, while the audience knows the terror attack and subsequent wave of Islamophobia that is to come. In an instant, the lives of the family, both how they feel internally and are perceived externally, will change.

Living with the nuclear family are Sharon’s parents. Grandma (Randa Jarrar) is an obsessive TV watcher who wears a full body niqāb. Grandpa (Azhar Usman) is a chain-smoking misogynist, who spouts off on monologues lecturing members of his family on their imperfections. On September 10, he unexpectedly dies and the family must figure out how to return his body to Cairo, as was his final wish. Grandma schemes up a way to get him into the carrier hold of an airplane the following day.

Just as Grandpa’s body is loaded into the plane, Uncle Ahmed says a prayer out loud at the airport. No one seems to notice. Then, smoke begins to waft over from Manhattan. The attacks have occurred. He begins to pray again, but this time is immediately tackled by a swarm of FBI agents. From beneath a pile of bodies, Uncle Ahmed assures the family that all will be well.

Such over-the-top moments are found throughout the series, which masterfully employs an absurdist style to capture the capricious surge in Islamophobia that ensued immediately following the terror attacks. In one scene, Hussein watches a television news broadcast that reveals the backgrounds of the hijackers as if it were a television game show. He pleads at the screen for the men not to be Muslim. The big reveal breaks his heart.

Youssef’s performance as Hussein is a genuine standout. Immediately following the attacks, Hussein insists that the family must assimilate as quickly as possible: code-switch, do not stick out, do not be yourself, become “#1 Happy Family USA.” He tries to make friends with their new neighbor (Timothy Olyphant) who may or may not be an FBI agent, and fights with Sharon, who, to honor her father, begins to go by her birth name, Sharia. In his performance, Youssef captures the angst and pain of Hussein’s situation, while leaving room to have fun with the absurdity of his paranoia, both real and imagined.

This is the show’s genius. It is an incredibly funny, incisive study in the reactive nature of human emotion. Hussein’s fear is understandable, but his family seems uncomfortable by how quickly he is willing to abandon any principle. While neighbors begin to grow scared of the family, Rumi’s teacher has an opposite, but no less over the top, reaction. Her efforts to show support quickly devolves into racist othering. “Feel welcome in our homeland,” she says to a confused Rumi.

As the country grapples with collective trauma, surging Islamophobia in the form of “See Something, Say Something,” and the early days of the surveillance state, Rumi faces the usual struggles that come with being a kid in the early 2000s. At one point, he uses Limewire to download music for a mixtape he gifts Mrs. Malcolm, only to receive a warning notice from the FBI. He must figure out how to get the CD back before she too is implicated in his plot.

It is but one example of how in #1 Happy Family USA, Youssef and Brady take the tropes and nostalgia of the coming-of-age sitcom and reimagine them to tell this American story. Rumi’s 9/11 conspiracy believing guidance counselor helps Rumi discover that Mrs. Malcolm has hidden the CD in her impenetrable safe. The guidance counselor tells him that the only way to save himself is by destroying the school.

“Illegally downloading music is the one thing the government does not fuck around with,” he tells Rumi. “So to prove that I’m not a terrorist, I have to blow up a building?” Rumi asks.

“Yup,” he replies. “Life can be pretty ironic.”

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He’s been writing Paste’s late night TV recaps since 2024. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.

Ramy Youssef’s #1 Happy Family USA Is a 21st Century Coming-of-Age Sitcom