The Cleveland Show

Since we didn't get a new episode of Family Guy this week, I decided to poke around through Hulu's archives and give The Cleveland Show a try.  I hadn't watched it before because I frankly wasn't interested.  And having watched some episodes?  I'm going to have to stand by that initial knee-jerk reaction.

The biggest hurdle for me is that The Cleveland Show is a spin-off based on the Family Guy character that I find the most boring.  Cleveland Brown has had a few good lines over the years.  ("Hey baby, how would you like to go black and then make a difficult decision regarding whether or not to go back?")  But "a few good lines" is great for a secondary character.  Not so great if you put that character in the spotlight.

Aside from being black (which is the basis for at least 50% of the jokes both on Family Guy and The Cleveland Show), Cleveland's "thing" is his weird accent.  Speech impediment?  Whatever.  The word "everybody" comes out as "ervrybody."  And so forth.

Going farther down the list, Cleveland's role on Family Guy was to be "the boring one."  The jokes about Cleveland hinge on the fact that he is the least interesting, most conventional resident of Spooner Street.  He's so boring that his wife was moved to have an affair with QUAGMIRE of all people.  Boring and meek, a theme which carries over into The Cleveland Show.

Who takes a character who's boring and meek, and gives them their own show?  It is baffling to me.

On The Cleveland Show, Cleveland serves as a foil for his wacky wife, kids, and neighbors.  (Bafflingly, two of these neighbors are talking bears.  The male bear, Tim, is voiced by Seth Macfarlane himself.  The female bear, Arianna, is voiced by Arianna Huffington.  I'm not sure what accent Seth's bear is supposed to have, but Arianna's bear obviously has a ridiculously heavy Greek accent.  I initially thought that Arianna the bear was meant to be a really crude parody of Arianna Huffington.  I guess I got that one wrong, eh?)

The Cleveland Show has been described as "Family Guy in black face," which is fairly accurate.  What I'm waiting to see is whether The Cleveland Show branches out and finds its own identity, the way American Dad did.  American Dad was meant to be a sort of stealth Family Guy replacement act, and it did have a lot of similarities - particularly in the first season.

However, American Dad has defined itself admirably, and is at least twenty times better than Family Guy.  The Cleveland Show has that potential - it could be Family Guy mashed up with Boondocks - but it is just not working for it.  Instead, it relies on tired jokes, the same old everyday misogyny, random cutaways, ridiculous plot devices, and blah blah blah.  

So far, I'm not seeing any reason to watch The Cleveland Show.  Even if you want a little Family Guy fix when you can't get a fresh one, The Cleveland Show just isn't going to do it for you.