Hayley Smith (American Dad!)

Hayley Smith
American Dad! character

Hayley Smith
First appearance "Pilot"
Created by Seth MacFarlane
Voiced by Rachael MacFarlane
Information
Full name Hayley Dreamsmasher Smith Fischer
Family Parents: Stan and Francine
Siblings: Steve
Pet(s): Roger and Klaus
Spouse(s) Jeff Fischer (husband)
Nationality American

Hayley Dreamsmasher[1]Smith Fischer is a character from the animated television series American Dad!. She is voiced by Rachael MacFarlane, the younger sister of one of the series co-creators, Seth MacFarlane.

Hayley, along with her father Stan, was one of the first two characters that were conceived and created for the series. Across the series, Hayley's storylines typically involve her liberal beliefs affronting her father's extremely conservative views, and her on-again-off-again relationship with boyfriend Jeff Fischer, whom she later marries in the show's sixth season.

Contents

Biography and personality

Hayley Smith is the daughter of Stan Smith, a CIA agent, and Francine Smith, a housewife. Hayley was born on a safari in Africa, due to Stan refusing to believe the OB-GYN when she said Francine should not travel. Unlike her father and her brother, Steve Smith, Hayley is ultra-liberal.[2] She is a casual user of marijuana. Hayley often helps the homeless, and is in favor of gun control.[3] This causes a great amount of distrust for Stan, consistently having views being polar opposite of hers, but deep down they are more alike than they think. When she was younger, Hayley and Stan got along very well, and indeed, they have similar personality traits, such as stubbornness and distrust of those they disagree with. In the third season episode "Stanny Slickers II: The Legend of Ollie's Gold", it is revealed that her middle name is Dreamsmasher.

She lives with her parents and goes to Groff Community College, though she moved out temporarily after a bitter argument with Stan.[2] As a college student, Hayley also majors in women's history [4] and promotes women's rights (though she downplayed the blatant gender oppression of the Middle East, even telling Saudi guards that she respected their right to chase her). Hayley is very often the rational and open-minded member of the family. For example, she helped to unionize the homeless men Stan paid to fight each other,[5] helped free foster children that Roger had enslaved,[6] and is the one most likely to stand up for people's rights when her family tries to exploit people. Nevertheless, she is also sometimes seen as hypocritical and has moments of weakness—for example, in "Camp Refoogee" she went to an African refugee camp and swore to help the starving people during the short time she expected to be there. However, after finding out they would be there for a few weeks, she went to the spa-like U.N. aid base and went so far as to eat steak,[7] despite being a vegetarian. Other members of the household seem to find her annoying, even Roger, especially after she critically railed on him for voting for President George W. Bush. [8]

The fourth season has started showing that Hayley is often prone to violent and uncontrollable mood swings. During puberty, she went through violent outbursts during every development, such as having to wear maxipads and her lack of developing breasts. These mood swings terrified her parents and they were fearful of the same problems in her brother, although it is shown Steve has had his temper more under control.

In the episode "Haylias" it is revealed that when she was a child, her father Stan had her put in "Project Daycare" where along with several other young children of CIA agents, she was trained and brainwashed to become a sleeper agent in hope that they could be the perfect father-daughter spy team.

During the program she had to go through punishment for small things, such as accidentally coloring outside the lines of a picture, which resulted in intense electrical shock.

The training stayed dormant in her mind for several years up until recently when the visions began regularly appearing in her dreams with Hayley believed was a sign for her to change her life and prompted her to move to France. She was in the process of doing it until Stan said her "trigger phrase" (which meant he had to yell "I'm getting fed up with this orgasm!"), to stop her from getting on a plane to France and upon Stan saying those words, Hayley became an emotionless, unfeeling being incapable of thinking for herself and solely obeying Stan's orders without question.

However Stan kept her active too long, and after a bloody fight she tried to kill him with a single gunshot to the forehead. Against all odds, Stan managed to survive, although it was later revealed that he had been dead for six minutes before being brought back to life. The altercation left Stan crippled, and as another unforeseen side-effect caused brain damage, which erased any memory he had of their pet goldfish, Klaus. This included the fact that they had known each other for a long time although Hayley later returned to normal.

This was the reason "Project Daycare" was stopped, as agents turned on their handlers and killed them after a week of activation.

Voice actors

According to a DVD special on the creation of American Dad, Laura Prepon (best known for her role of Donna on That '70s Show) was initially chosen to play Hayley, but Prepon was dropped and replaced by Rachael MacFarlane (younger sister of Seth MacFarlane).

Romance

Hayley has an on-and-off boyfriend named Jeff, who is a vegetarian as well.[9] Hayley did once move out, to move in with Jeff who it turns out lives in his van. They sometimes go hiking and use marijuana together. She once dumped Jeff, because he agrees with everything that she says. During this time, she slept with Stan's boss, Deputy-Director Bullock, a conservative. This happened after they had an argument; he apologized and she ended up sleeping with him at his house. At first, Stan was outraged, but he later ignored their relationship and decided it was a great chance to be promoted to "Deputy-Deputy Director". Hayley later dumped Bullock before announcing Stan's promotion. Bullock learned that a more assertive Jeff came back into her life. Being very upset, Bullock promised Stan the promotion if he killed Jeff. Stan didn't kill Jeff, but ended up battling his boss upon him insulting Hayley. Bullock gave Stan the job before Stan finished him off. Jeff disappeared for a time after Phantom of the Telethon, where he was performing hacky-sack tricks on-stage at a telethon when a boat, pushed by Roger, fell on him. Hayley once mentioned Jeff and her may marry one day- although her father wasn't happy he came close to Jeff at the end of the episode. Jeff and Hayley sometimes live in Hayley's room or Jeff's van. Hayley and Jeff elope in the 100th episode after tricking Stan and Francine into giving them $50,000, which they spent trying to escape from Roger who was trying to steal it from them.[10]

When the Smith family was relocated to Saudi Arabia, Hayley also slept with a man named Kazim who claimed to be a tormented, conflicted member of a terrorist group.,[11] but who was really a vendor for the restaurant chain Shawarma King who lied about his job in order to appear more interesting to women. In "Dungeons and Wagons" the two are shown dating, but again Hayley dumps Jeff for being too clingy; he then goes on to develop a hobby of playing Dragon Scuffle. They are a couple again in the second season finale,[12] though she breaks up with him yet again in season three.[13]

She has also turned to exotic dancing in order to pay for her raised tuition [2] and prostitution to supplement the family's income during hard times (and prostitution for drugs, according to "Helping Handis", when she grumbled "Damn it, Eddie! I slept with you!" after finding nothing but marijuana stems and seeds).[14]

There have been numerous scenes that hint that Hayley might be bisexual. In the episode "Haylias", there's a scene where Hayley tells her parents that she's planning to leave the United States to go to France to live a more uninhibited life as well as engage in a string of wild love affairs, including one with a woman named Simone.[15]

References

  1. ^ Season 3 episode 15 "Stanny Slickers II: The Legend of Ollie's Gold
  2. ^ a b c "Stan Knows Best". Written by Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman. Directed by Pam Cooke. American Dad!. FOX. No. 3, season 1.
  3. ^ "Stannie Get Your Gun". Written by Brian Boyle. Directed by John Aoshima. American Dad!. FOX. season 1 episode 1–season 6 episode 2. No. 14, season 1.
  4. ^ "Roger n' Me". Written by Rick Wiener and Kenny Schwartz. Directed by Anthony Lioi. American Dad!. FOX. No. 20, season 1.
  5. ^ "Threat Levels". Written by David Zuckerman. Directed by Brent Woods. American Dad!. FOX. No. 2, season 1.
  6. ^ "Tears of a Clooney". Written by Chris McKenna and Matt McKenna. Directed by Brent Woods. American Dad!. FOX. No. 23, season 1.
  7. ^ "Camp Refoogee". Written by Josh Bycel and Jonathan Fener. Directed by Albert Calleros. American Dad!. FOX. No. 24, season 2.
  8. ^ "All About Steve". Written by Chris McKenna and Matt McKenna. Directed by Mike Kim. American Dad!. FOX. No. 10, season 1.
  9. ^ "Stan of Arabia: Part 1". Written by Nahnatcka Khan. Directed by Rodney Clouden. American Dad!. FOX. No. 12, season 1.
  10. ^ "Bullocks to Stan". Written by Alison McDonald. Directed by Brent Woods. American Dad!. FOX. No. 12, season 1.
  11. ^ "Stan of Arabia: Part 2". Written by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas. Directed by Anthony Lioi. American Dad!. FOX. No. 13, season 1.
  12. ^ "Joint Custody". Written by Keith Heisler. Directed by Joe Daniello. American Dad!. FOX. No. 42, season 2.
  13. ^ "Haylias". American Dad!. FOX. No. 47, season 3.
  14. ^ "Failure is Not a Factory-installed Option". Written by Etan Cohen. Directed by Rodney Clouden. American Dad!. FOX. No. 26, season 2.
  15. ^ "Haylias". Written by David Zuckerman. Directed by Brent Woods. American Dad!. FOX. No. 47, season 3.

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