Review:
The Cleveland Show: Episode Fifteen

115: Once Upon a Tyne in New York

‘Cartoon bears don’t wear pants!’ – Cleveland Brown

And so the trend of decent episodes continues. At this rate, The Cleveland Show will get back on track and build its own brand.

Despite still being technically newlyweds, Cleveland and Donna are already failing to see eye-to-eye. After confiding in the guys that they’ve never had a honeymoon, Coach McFall convinces Cleveland to take Donna to New York City. Unfortunately for Donna, what she believes to be a romantic getaway is instantly ruined as Lester, Holt, Tim the Bear and Coach McFall all invite themselves along for the ride.

Meanwhile, Roberta, Rallo and Cleveland Junior stow away for the journey and head to the MTV headquarters to pitch the reality show ‘Roberta’.

While last week’s episode managed to get the twist-to-humour ratio fairly spot-on, this instalment is lacking a bit in the structure department. You see, the story doesn’t really progress that far beyond its original conceit – Cleveland and Donna are having problems at home. Cleveland and Donna have problems in New York.

To be fair, the first half of the episode is genuinely really funny, with great situations arising from the native Virginian’s lack of understanding of New York. Tim the Bear ends up in a gay bar for large, hairy men, Lester winds up in Harlem, confusing everybody he meets for Cleveland and Holt somehow finds himself locked in a cage and poked with a stick by Donald Trump. The first two parts of that make sense. How Holt came to be locked in a cage is never actually explained, which is hugely disappointing.

However, the real meat of the episode, bizarrely, is centred around Coach McFall as he tries to win the heart of former Cagney and Lacey star Tyne Daly. Quite why anyone needed to see any more of this character after his one-note joke appearance in episode eleven – ‘Field of Streams’ – is completely unknown. His one gag is that half his face is missing. Either someone on the staff really likes the supervillains in the Batman comics, or there’s something we’re missing that needs explaining. Either way, the character is fairly useless.