Review:
The Cleveland Show: Episode One

101: Pilot

‘What the hell? He’s getting his own show?’ – Stewie Griffin

With Family Guy proving itself as a work of utter comic genius so fine that not even two – count them, two – cancellations could stop it, and with replacement show American Dad finding its own feet and gaining ground very quickly, it seems that there’s nothing that cartoon supremo Seth MacFarlane can’t do. Indeed, Fox was so keen on this latest animated fare they ordered forty-four episodes of it before the pilot was even broadcast. So how does MacFarlane fair when he takes one of his most beloved characters away from the core cast?

The Cleveland Show is a spin-off based entirely on the antics of the loveable slow talking neighbour Cleveland Brown and it starts off promisingly, with the protagonist and his son, Cleveland Jr, getting kicked out of their house by ex-wife Loretta. From there, though, it quickly gets bogged down, turning into a series of character and location introductions to get us through the rest of the show.

The main problem on hand here is Cleveland himself. He’s a fantastic character in Family Guy, but there he’s part of an ensemble, whereas here the entire show is built around his antics, and it will make or break on how strong a character he is. He simply isn’t giving off the right vibe for a leading man. Peter Griffin is a loveable oaf with the ‘oaf’ factor dialled up to eleven. Stan Smith is a concerned parent and caricature of Fox viewers. What is Cleveland, exactly? He’s just a bumbling shmuck, and that’s where the second problem comes in: his supporting cast.

New wife Donna comes across as a woman without a backbone – the exact opposite of all previous MacFarlane females. She spends this episode being nice to Cleveland without once making the effort to reconnect with him, even going so far as to bring her ex-husband back for an eleventh hour second act climax. Perhaps her character will develop as time goes by – after all, it wasn’t until the third season of Family Guy that Lois stopped being a nagging housewife. Donna’s children, Roberta and Rallo, feel like exceptionally broad strokes on a very wide canvas, hopefully leaving masses of room for them to grow. At the moment, Roberta is similar to Hayley Smith, minus the whining, while Rallo’s need for sexual gratification flip-flops between humorous and downright sinister. He is, after all, five years old.