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The folks behind
Family Guy have been saying some
of the most alarming things.
Like "sweet and funny" and "sense of family."
They are using these words to describe The Cleveland
Show, a Family Guy spin-off that premieres on
Thursday night.
Coming from Seth MacFarlane's crew, such descriptions are
like tiny time bombs disguised as rubber ducks, or festively
wrapped birthday gifts filled with fake vomit and itching
powder.
While executive producer Rich Appel may be sincere when he
says The Cleveland Show is "kinder and gentler" than
its predecessor, he is working from the same warped palette
that gave us Stewie, the erudite and profane baby who beat
his dog to a bloody pulp for laughs on last year's Emmy
broadcast.
So while "kinder and gentler" may squeeze through the door -
in an early episode of The Cleveland Show a dog is
also killed, by a car - sweet ain't going to make it.
Because "sweet" isn't, at least in the current vernacular,
synonymous for scatological.
Or sophomoric.
Or surprisingly slow.
All of which The Cleveland Show most certainly is.
Following his divorce, Cleveland Brown (voiced by Family Guy
producer Mike Henry) announces to his friends on Family
Guy that he is taking his son, Cleveland Jun, and heading
west to become a minor league baseball scout.
But first he makes a stop in his hometown of Stoolbend.
There Cleveland gets sidetracked by his high school
sweetheart, Donna (Sanaa Lathan), now divorced from the man
she chose over Cleveland.
Before long, Cleveland and his son have moved in with Donna,
her teenage daughter, Roberta (Reagan Gomez-Preston), and
5-year-old son, Rallo (also Henry), who is a foul-mouthed
stand-in for Stewie, channeling blaxploitation films rather
than a British accent.
There's a crazy hillbilly neighbour on one side and, on the
other, a couple of Germanic bears (the male is voiced by
MacFarlane, the female by Arianna Huffington, and I don't
even know what to say about this).
no-one is safe from ridicule.
Not Cleveland, who sounds just like a white guy voicing a
black guy (because that's what he is) and spends way more
time naked than any cartoon human should.
Not Cleveland Jun, who is heavy and therefore stupid.
Not Donna, who is so desperate for a man she'll take
Cleveland.
And certainly not Kathleen Turner, who turns up in a randomly
mean aside.
Even Kurt Cobain is resurrected to make fun of Courtney Love
(is anyone else even still talking about Courtney Love?).
The Cleveland Show follows a more typical plot formula
than Family Guy - a problem arises, messes are made solving
the problem, but in the end things seem to be better than
before.
For those who love and admire Family Guy, The
Cleveland Show offers another version, slightly watered
down and, at least it seems to someone who has seen but does
not regularly watch Family Guy, much less smart.
In trying to infuse their trademark raunchy and outrageous
humour with something approximating family values, Appel and
his team have wound up with something that is neither fish
nor fowl - Los Angeles Times The Cleveland Show premieres at
8pm on Thursday on C4.
