Family Guy Spins off Cleveland

E Online is reporting that a new spinoff is currently in the works to feature Cleveland, the soft-spoken neighbor in popular animated sitcom Family Guy. "Not much is known about Cleveland other than the fact it will revolve around the Brown clan. It's unclear whether the series will remain set in the town of Quahog or whether Cleveland, along with his wife and son, will continue to appear on Family Guy, though as both series are animated, the double-billing won't so much be a logistical problem as a creative decision."

Re:Let me be the first to say

[lazy_nihilist]

Even better, more futurama.

Good news, everyone!

The Brown clan? What clan?

[phillymjs]

Unless it's a prequel of sorts, what clan are they talking about? Cleveland's wife left him, and his son hasn't been seen in who knows how long.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[countSudoku()]

Mod that comment to on-topic please. This is certainly the place to voice your concerns about this crap show and question why anyone thinks this is news for nerds. South Park and Simpsons wipe their asses with the Family Guy scripts. Was that too strong? Seriously, FG is not that clever or funny, unless you're a complete idiot, then you might actually enjoy it greatly. Sorry about you being an idiot though. No offense was meant. Maybe read some more. It helps.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[KublaiKhan]

Not everything has to be cerebral. Sometimes it's nice to take a few drinks of something high proof, sit back, and enjoy a few dumb laughs.

Besides, the concept of the evil genius toddler amuses me.

Warming up to American Dad

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it seems a sad ripoff of Family Guy (talking dog=talking fish, etc) and the first several American Dad episodes wern't anywhere near as sharp as the new ones, the show has grown on me and gotten sharper. We get the know the characters and backgrounds along with the writers getting sharper and sharper.

Go pull the first volume of Family Guy and you can see it is nowhere near as sharp as it got in the 2nd season and above. It had all the elements we love, but it only delivered 10-25% of the time. I feel American Dad took time to get up to speed, and I'm finding it fit into Seth's universe quite nicely.

Felt the same way on the first couple of episodes of Futurama. Felt is was a sad follow-up to the fading Simpsons. Now it stands up quite well.

Re:Why?

[Chris Burke]

I say why a spin-off at all?

And the answer is because Fox Broadcasting is run by clinical retards (no offense to anyone who is or is related to an actual retarded person, as you or they are probably vastly overqualified to run Fox).

Seriously, first they dick around with Family Guy's time slot enough that nobody knows when its on, it gets bad ratings, so they cancel it. Then the simians (apologies to monkeys) realize they were flushing a heap of cash down the toilet when the DVD sales were through the roof. So they brought it back, and hey, if a little Seth McFarlane humor is good, more is better, so let's make American Dad too! And hey that's not doing bad so let's go for broke and make a third show that's essentially the same!

I bet once they've saturated the market (more), the spin-offs won't do so well and they'll start screwing around with the scheduling of all three shows until they've once again convinced themselves they aren't worth it and shit-can the lot.

And it isn't like they haven't screwed up plenty of shows before like this *cough*Futurama*cough*Firefly*cough* Personally I think the only thing they ever had going for them is that they'd air shows other networks wouldn't take a chance on, and the only reason they had their early hits of The Simpsons and Married With Children is because back then they were so starved for content they simply didn't have the capacity to screw up those shows.

Anyway, I think pretty much any Family Guy spinoff is doomed to failure, whether it's Cleveland or Quagmire or Meg for that matter (oh hey, they have a Mike Judge show, maybe a Family Guy/Daria crossover! where's my money, Fox?!)

Re:Why?

[milsoRgen]

Why Cleveland? Why not Quagmire (Cleveland's wife agrees) or any of the other more interesting characters?

Because most of the other characters already have their place in the shows cannon, they are well established features that are nothing in and of themselves but when taken as a whole with the griffin family the create family guy. Cleveland is unique in the fact not much is set in stone about him, he isn't a sex offender, he isn't a cop with something to prove due to physical short comings. He is somewhat like mort, I can understand why the chose Cleveland as he is one of the more major characters yet has little established about him other than, he has a son we haven't seen in some time, a wife that left him, and a speech impediment due to a head injury. He was once an auctioneer. It seems that as one of the major minor characters, with little explained or developed about him (other than his mild-mannerness (is that word?)) he has the most popularity and greatest potential in regards to character development.

Just my 0.02

When I hear Cleveland, I just want to go to sleep until I hear a "Diggity".

I am sorry you feel that way, I don't have cable. I buy seasons on dvd, so I have watched the series more than most, and in my opinion Quagmire is one of the most shallow one dimensional characters in the series. Granted I love the guy, I love any sexually oriented humor that continues to push the boundaries on broadcast television. But his jokes are generally in your face and lack the nuances alot of the episodes/other characters tend to provide, which can only really be rivaled by Arrested Development. Another show I watch, over and over.

Re:It worked for the Jeffersons.

[fermion]

Beyond the obvious similarities, the reason, IMHO, that The Jeffersons succeeded was because it was a significantly different show. As entertaining as MacFarlane is, he does not seem to anything other than family guy. American Dad, for instance, just is not that different, simply the same show with a plot instead of arbitrarily strung together jokes. Recall that "All in the family" had many spin off, some good, some not. In particular "Archie Bunker's Place", though successful, was pretty bad.

Re:Why?

[fuzzix]

At least until The Simpsons spin off Apu.

I was about to bring up The Simpsons... not in a racist way... more in a "This show is no longer worth watching" way.

To my mind Family Guy suffered a faster decline than The Simpsons, dying suddenly in series 5 rather than suffering a patchy sort of decline from series 7 while continuing to air the very occasional, almost classic episode on into the ninth series before finally dying completely in the tenth.

A Cleveland spinoff... I'd actually rather watch Chief Wiggum and "Skinny Boy" arsing around the remains of New Orleans.

For American Readers:

:%s/series/season/g

;)

Re:Family guy sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Complete with stereotypical accent, behaviour, job and number of kids. Yup about as respectful as a black man eating fried chicken, an Irish New York cop and a Brit with bad teeth.