There’s a nice scene in the pilot episode of “The Cleveland Show” (7:30 p.m. Central Sundays on Fox) where Peter, Quagmire, Joe and the “Family Guy” gang gather around to say goodbye to spinoff-bound Cleveland Brown. Peter hugs Cleveland, and of course, Quagmire says something sexual in the background, but basically it’s a normal farewell scene.
The egotistical Stewie says, “How does THAT guy get his own show?,” but mostly, the scene sets the stage for a very funny new series that seems to have more warmth than “Family Guy.”
The newly divorced Cleveland and his son, Cleveland Jr., intend to drive to California so the elder Brown can get a job as a minor-league baseball scout for the Dodgers. They stop in Cleveland’s hometown of Stoolbend, Va., where he runs into Donna, his high school sweetheart. By the end of the episode, they get married, and — as one character puts it — a “black Brady Bunch” is formed.
Before that happy stroke of luck, Cleveland is his typical, down-on-his-luck self. Peter destroys Cleveland’s house while he’s taking a bath and he falls naked to the ground (a running joke, as “Family Guy” fans know). Later, he finds Donna with her deadbeat baby daddy — who promises to take Donna to Woolworth’s and buy her a parakeet — and wonders how this can get any worse. Then his son calls from the upstairs bathroom, “Daddy, can you wipe me?,” summing up Cleveland’s life in a nutshell.
Seth MacFarlane’s spinoff is packed with stereotypes — but these are knowing, subversive portrayals; on an animated show, stereotypes are somehow much funnier than they’d be in a live-action show. Two of my favorites: 1, A young Cleveland looks exactly like Little Richard, and 2, whenever Cleveland gets sad, someone remarks, “I didn’t know they (black people) cried. I thought they just got angrier.”
Already, MacFarlane (by the way, how weird was it that he was on “FlashForward”?) has the “group of four friends” set up, featuring Cleveland, a middle-aged guy who lives with his mom, a racist who wants to be more racist than he actually is (he figures that since we have a black president, he can have a black friend — they can talk about the president), and finally, a European-accented bear.
The bear seems jarring at first, until you remember that “Family Guy” has a talking dog and “American Dad” has a talking goldfish and alien. Being an animated show gives you a lot of comedic flexibility; having talking animals gives you even more — “Cleveland” may be a “nicer” show than “Family Guy,” but it still pushes the weird-meter as far as it’ll go, and it’s the best new sitcom of the fall.
I thought “Community” (8:30 p.m. Central Thursdays on NBC) would win that honor, but I decided to cancel it after two episodes. I’m done with snarky lead characters, something that was great a decade ago but now just feels stale. Joel McHale, who used to gather up the dumbest moments of reality TV on E!’s “The Soup,” plays a former lawyer who is finally found out for getting a degree from Colombia (the country) rather than Columbia (the school), so he goes back to community college. He’s not annoying, but he’s not worth rooting for, either.
“Community” falls flat. McHale, Chevy Chase and their mates in a “Breakfast Club”-style Spanish study group sit there waiting for the funny to be inserted by the writers, but it never is. One character has Asperger’s. “Ass burgers,” another character says, snickering. Yeah, the writing is that lazy.
“Modern Family” (8 p.m. Central Wednesdays on ABC), a better live-actioner, puts a slightly new spin on the tired old genre of the family sitcom. It has a typical family (husband, wife, three kids, and chaos around the house) along with a gay couple and a “schlubby old guy and his hot young wife” family. It turns out that they’re all part of the same extended family; the point is that there’s no template for a 2009 family.
“Modern Family” has some standard characters (the “cool” dad) and some that pop a little more (the 11-year-old who wears his romantic heart on his sleeve, even though his well-meaning stepdad urges him to not be so self-confident). But it’s still a family sitcom, and so it doesn’t excite me all that much. Kind of like how I’ve heard that “Southland” is a good cop show. Any show that’s bound up by formula makes me squirm a little on my couch — I want shows that at least have the potential to break new ground.
Did you like the first episode of “The Cleveland Show” as much as I did? What are your favorite new sitcoms of the fall? Chat about these topics below.