Review:
The Cleveland Show: Episode Eighteen

118: Brotherly Love

‘A B C D E F G… Somebody should have told you not to fuck with me.’ – Cleveland Junior.

At last, after a few weeks of merely above-average animated comedy shenanigans, The Cleveland Show finally produces another great episode and the best part is that Cleveland himself hardly features in it.

Cleveland Junior has fallen in love with Chanel, girl in his school, a fact that he professes to Rallo, who takes it upon himself to teach his older step-sibling the secrets to winning a lady’s heart. Unfortunately for Junior and Rallo, it turns out that Chanel has a sort-of boyfriend in the guise of Kenny West (voiced by guest star Kanye West), an arrogant wannabe rapper who publicly humiliates the two of them.

Meanwhile, Cleveland and Terry are mistaken for strippers while installing cable TV in a woman’s house. However, it soon transpires that Terry might be moonlighting as a stripper while on the job anyway, leading to Cleveland acting as Terry’s manager.

It’s a cracking episode for many reasons. Firstly, the decision to focus on two of the show’s most interesting and most underused characters allows for a heck of a lot of new sides of their personalities to shine through. It’s also great to finally see Cleveland Junior and Rallo paired up together to tackle a subject that they both have entirely different views on – women. Junior walks around with his head in the clouds and his heart on his sleeve, oblivious to how people see him but also afraid to befriend anybody new. Rallo, on the other hand, charges in with the subtlety of a plane crash and delivers a few flippant lines to melt any icy heart. It’s a fascinating study of who they are.

Things are not quite so great on the subplot front, which oozes potential but never really reaches the heights it promises. It starts out well enough with a fair few good gags about stripping and Cleveland’s hilarious botched attempts to strip in a sexy way, and even the few plot developments on from that are good, as Terry hires his friend to manage his bookings. It’s in the final act that things radically – and quite randomly – come to an end as Cleveland and Terry jointly decide to give up the life of stripping calmly and easily, without any real obstacles or dangers getting in their way. It’s very odd turn of events, especially given how good the main story arc is.