Seth McFarlane has overreached. Just as Family Guy began its decline, Fox extended to him the chance to spread out his empire into two more shows. At the time, even as much as it made sense with The Simpsons in a 6 year quality tailspin, it didn’t bode well for the variety of Fox’s lineup. Now, with Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show as three quarters of Fox’s animated headliners, Seth McFarlane’s material is running thin. So thin, in fact, that good solid laughs are increasingly hard to come by in Family Guy, and nigh nonexistent in American Dad and The Cleveland Show. They might warrant a few chuckles, but in the second season of The Cleveland Show an actual laugh is a rare result, because whatever momentum it started off with as a spin-off of one of Family Guy’s weakest supporting members has all been lost as it struggles to decide if it’s a send up of classic sitcoms intended for black audiences in the 70s, 80s and 90s or just another poorly constructed stage for pop-culture satire.
The second season has a few good episode ideas going for it, but otherwise it feels like little more than rehashes of Family Guy, American Dad or general sitcom episodes with Cleveland standing in for, say, Bill Cosby. Except Cleveland never has been and probably never will be as interesting a character as Bill Cosby. On top of that, the writing for The Cleveland Show borders on inept and even when they do something interesting, like make a mock live episode (a great lampoon of an all too popular sitcom publicity stunt) they never go far enough to make it truly funny – and that’s the problem of the entire series. It never goes far enough with any of its good ideas and runs its bad ideas into the ground.
DVD Bonus Features
The basic extras in the set include a clip reel of the guests from the second season, deleted scenes, and the Cleveland Show panel from Comic-Con 2010. The best featurettes in the bunch are the trailer for the fake film Hot Cocoa Bang Bang, Cleveland Jr.’s “worry journal” (a list of everything that makes him anxious and plays something like a b-grade Jack Handy bit), and some great commentaries by the guest stars.
"The Cleveland Show: The Complete Season Two" is on sale September 27, 2011 and is not rated. Animation, Comedy. Directed by Anthony Lioi, Albert Calleros. Written by Richard Appel, Mike Henry, Seth MacFarlane. Starring Kevin Michael Richardson, Sanaa Lathan, Seth MacFarlane, Mike Henry.
