Review:
The Cleveland Show: Episode Fourteen

114: The Curious Case of Junior Working at the Stool

‘These are a little tight… when I get home, it’s going to take me a few minutes to peel my slab off my sack.’ – Tim the Bear

Another fairly good episode, one that upsets the current good-bad-good trend that The Cleveland Show seems to have been sticking to as of late.

Inspired by Lester’s son Ernie getting a job at a slaughterhouse, Cleveland encourages Junior to look for work. After a series of disastrous attempts, Cleveland Jr. accidentally cleans up the Stool bar and is hired by bar man Gus. Unfortunately for Cleveland and his friends, Junior actually forces the guys to pay for their drinks and turns the Stool into a trendy nightspot, forcing Cleveland to intervene.

Meanwhile, Roberta gets into a competition with a rival girl at school over who has the best accessory and tries to pass off Rallo as her adopted African baby.

This episode manages to find that rare and difficult balance between a plot that moves and twists with speed and a plot that has dozens of jokes packed into it.

The main arc goes down a pretty straightforward route, one that you can see coming a mile off (kind of given away by the fact that this is the first time the viewers have ever met Gus the bartender), but, like the last episode, has the foresight to twist before the plot becomes tired or comfortable. It’s a decent and refreshing change of pace, as each of the acts brings a different plot dynamic as well as a different set of jokes with it. Act one sees some very amusing disasters for Junior at his various interviews – being mistaken for a cow at the slaughterhouse, being told that the newspaper business is obsolete during the interview – while act two sees him managing to upset his father by modernising the Stool.