The Cleveland Show

Show Info

Genre(s): Animation, Comedy

Created By: Seth MacFarlane

First Air Date: September 27, 2009

Summary

Starring Mike Henry, Sanaa Lathan, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Seth MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane spins off Cleveland Brown to his own show. He leaves Quahog with his son and makes a stopover to his Virginia hometown where he falls in love with his high school sweetheart.

Episode Guide & More Info: More about this show at TV.com

Also On The Web: Official Show Site

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this show is 3.7 (out of 10) based on 87 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andy M. gave it a0:
This show reminds me of the final episode of Seinfield - when viewers tuned in and watched, patiently for the jokes to be revealed. But the joke was on the viewer. Same with this miserable show. The only one laughing is Seth McFarland, and he's laughing at how much like sheep we really are.

Andrew M gave it a10:
Funnier than Family Guy.

Brian M gave it a10:
Funny, but not funnier than family guy.

Shawn O gave it a0:
I have been a Family Guy fan since day one, and when I say day one, I mean day one... Not the '05 relaunch. FG itself has gone dramatically downhill over the last two years and anyone who was a fan from the beginning knows this. The show now lives on recycled jokes, shock value attacks against anything remotely traditionally American (they can't even avoid running with the unsubstantiated and slanderous charges of anti-Semitism against Walt Disney), altogether uncomfortable and un-funny bits that drone on forever and of course the absolutely pointless Conway Twitty cutscenes that take up 20% of an episode (yes, I've timed it) and are just blatantly obvious attempts to fill in where the lazy writing just runs out of gas. So, as optimistic as I was about Cleveland simply for the fact that American Dad (which really was the first FG spinoff) is brilliant and harkens back to when FG was so funny that you had to watch an episode multiple times just to catch the jokes you missed because you were laughing so much the first time you watched it, I really can't say that I'm surprised at how bad Cleveland is. To put it bluntly, Cleveland is a Frankenstein of every thing that is wrong about the last two seasons of FG (which has actually showed significant signs of improvement this year). That's all it is. I mean seriously, it doesn't even have any of the slivers of brilliance that the last two seasons of FG have occasionally shown at times to make you hold out hope for next week's episode. It's mean for the sake of being mean without an ounce of humorous satirical subtext, the characters are poor clones of FG characters and the ensembplaid uninspired and hardly involved. The jokes are either recycled FG jokes (see slamming the brakes on and having a passenger smack his head) and the pop culture references are dated. I'm sorry but did I miss something or did they seriously do a '6 degrees to Kevin Bacon' joke? Others have brought up the racial stereotypes and expressed their discomfort with them and while MacFarlane's defenders will say that he's always tried to push the envelope and I'd he wasn't making someone in the audience uncomfortable, he wasn't doing his job. Well, there are a few big differences between Cleveland and old FG. First and foremost, there was humor and satire thatbwas obvious in old FG and even when jokes were made that highlighted a racial stereotype, it was done tongue-in-cheek usually to illustrate how absurd a stereotype was to begin with. Second, as uncomfortable as a joke may have been, they didn't have the air of mean-spiritedness about them that the jokes ont his show (or even more recent FG) has. Third, and the audience needs to be aware of this: this show is written by white people and the actor who voices Cleveland is a white man. This portrayal of African Americans as seen through the white lens is the equivalent of a bunch of white guys putting on black face and getting a prime-time spot to do it. Seth MacFarlane has beocme the Al Jolsen of 2009, sorry folks. Am I suggesting that the show is racist in and of itself? No, not all, but it is certainly is in poor taste which is something that FG has only been guilty of recently, despite its controversial history. To make matters worse, it's just not funny at all.

J Cole gave it an8:
Hilarious pilot and the episodes since the pilot have kept me laughing. All around good stuff.

Cameron gave it a10:
I actually find this show really funny, so do most of the people i know. hopefully it stays on the air.

Brian N gave it a1:
Much like the movie "Multiplicity", the copy of a copy format here falls dreadfully thin. The writing is lazy, the jokes are stale, and the fact that the well-written and witty "King of the Hill" was axed to make way for this pitiful drivel makes the gut wrenching punch to the viewers' gonads that much more painful. Avoid this like the swine flu, ironically a more topical joke than anything written up for this dreadful mess.

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