Review – The Cleveland Show
The Cleveland Show – FOX – 8:30/7:30pm Sunday – USA
Let’s get it out of the way up front: I hate Seth MacFarlane. It’s more out of principle than for any real reason with what little love I may have once had for Family Guy having been washed away by waves of incessant quoting from colleagues and strangers alike. It became impossible to watch Family Guy the show without seeing Family Guy the phenomenon and it’s become increasingly impossible to do anything these days without MacFarlane’s evil grinning head appearing everywhere to pimp his little animated programs.
As the years have passed and American Dad came along it became harder and harder to suppress the rage. How can we live in a world that lets Futurama get cancelled but still allows Seth freaking MacFarlane and his ego to breed unchecked. So you can imagine my reaction to the news that MacFarlane would be given a THIRD show, this time around though it would be a spinoff of Family Guy and not just a carbon copy of it pretending to be a new idea.
In one of the more bizarre decisions MacFarlane has decided to take Family Guy’s least popular character Cleveland and spin a show off around him and his new family. I guess we can at least be thankful Quagmire didn’t get his own giggity giggity half hour.
In an way too long and in-jokey opening sequence we learn that Cleveland is unhappy with his current life. So after his wife leaves him and Peter destroys his house Cleveland decides it’s time to take a job as a baseball scout back in California. All this wackiness ends with Stewie complaining “What the hell, he’s getting his own show?”
Of course on the way to California Cleveland and his teenage son Cleveland Junior stop off in the HIGH-lariously named town of Stoolbend, Virginia. Cleveland visits his old high school and finds his high school crush Donna. She’s got two kids of her own, a daughter and a wise cracking sexually promiscuous toddler. By episodes end they’ve fallen in love all over again and gotten married.
Cleveland’s new neighbours include a racist redneck, a short guy who still lives with his mum and a family of German bears. You see, MacFarlane loves the joke of animals that can talk, like Brian on Family Guy. If there was a joke he loves even more than that it would be animals that can talk with a German accent, like Klaus the German goldfish on American Dad. I wonder what funny accented animal will appear in Seth’s next show. Whatever it is, I sure hope they’re best friends with an alien of questionable sexuality.
The biggest problem with The Cleveland Show is that it’s honestly hard to differentiate between the ‘being a bad sitcom on purpose’ stuff and the ‘just being bad because it IS bad’ stuff. The Cleveland Show is stupid, but then that’s also kind of the point. The whole thing reminded me of that Simpsons spin off episode, causing me to ponder whether Moe and the ghost of Grandpa Simpson getting their own series would still be funny if they really did get their own series. The Cleveland Show can poke fun at tired spin offs all it likes but in the end it’s still a tired spin off.
Even the most devoted of Family Guy followers are going to struggle to find something to like here. Moving past the fact that Cleveland’s voice becomes grating after extended periods of time and looking to the jokes there’s not a lot on offer to like. The cut away gags sprinkled throughout the pilot include a joke about R. Kelly’s urination fetish and a baby Dolly Parton having enormous boobs. If it wasn’t already obvious: The Cleveland Show gets to snack on leftover American Dad jokes. You kind of have to wonder why Seth MacFarlane would spread himself so thin just to make a third show exactly like his first two? I mean other than for the money… oh right. Of course. Sorry. I almost forgot for a minute that Seth MacFarlane isn’t a massive sell out.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad
