The Jay Leno Show, The Cleveland Show, and Brothers
True, he scored a coup on the first episode by having Kanye West the day after the VMA embarrassment. I think we can agree that Kanye’s a dick, but to me you make the point better by not letting him plug his album on your show, rather than asking him how his dead mother would feel about his outburst. Nobody covered themselves in glory there. Yeah, Kanye should feel bad, but since he lives and breathes off of people paying attention to him, it seems like it’s probably better to stop doing so.
Of course, I can’t be fully objective, because I think it’s fantastically stupid for NBC to cede five hours of primetime to Leno. I think it’s a crappy way to treat Conan O’Brien, too. He’s finally got the big gig, only to find that he’s still the second talk show of the night. But there’s just a creative bankruptcy about it. It’s NBC admitting that they don’t have any faith in their lineup, and aren’t interested in developing any new ideas. It looks really low-rent, and NBC is a network that’s had its most successful periods when it develops a strong brand identity. NBC does its best when they convince you that if you enjoy one of their shows, you’ll probably enjoy the rest. They were using that strategy a decade before HBO.
The loss of the 10 PM slot takes away NBC’s ability to experiment. From a business sense, I understand that they want to try and lose less money. But as a guy who cares about TV, this breaks my heart. Five hours a week that might have resulted in some interesting programming, maybe a cult favorite or something ahead of its time that will prove influential in years to come. Those hours are gone, and as a network, NBC is worse off for losing those hours.
The Prognosis: Not only do I not enjoy this show, it makes me sad for the future. That’s a lot for one show to accomplish.
The Cleveland Show
FOX, Sunday 8:30 PM
The Premise: A spin-off of Family Guy following the exact same formula: Fat guy and his wife, three kids one of whom is a toddler that talks like an adult, and a talking animal.The Personnel: The people who bring you Family Guy.
The Poop: OK, so I hate Family Guy. And it’s not just that I don’t think it’s funny, but I think it’s ultimately damaging. I don’t like the Hanna-Barbera style animation that is in no way acceptable for modern prime-time programming. I hate the overuse of non sequitur flashback jokes, usually based around one well-known characteristic of a randomly chosen celebrity. I can’t stand the crude reliance on racial jokes, usually told so witlessly that they’re not jokes at the expense of stereotypes as they are just actual stereotypes. And I loathe the increasing abundance of rape jokes.
Even worse, in my mind, is the way that Family Guy never gives its audience anything to think about. They don’t question themselves. While Family Guy pretends to be satire, it’s actually messianic nihilism – everything, except us and the things we agree with, sucks. They never turn the humor inward to make themselves and the audience the target of the humor. While The Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, and most of the better Adult Swim offerings have a sense of humor about themselves. They’re willing to ask the audience to think about their beliefs or why they laughed at a crude joke. Family Guy doesn’t allow that introspection. They’re in a perfect position to make their audience wonder why they laughed at a joke about rape or the Holocaust, but they don’t. It’s witless and reptilian. It’s worse than lowest common denominator entertainment – it’s entertainment that actively seeks to create a new lowest common denominator.
While The Cleveland Show is less crude, it’s not any better. In fact, it’s actually less funny than the mothership. Sometimes, Family Guy can get a chuckle out of some absurdity or a funny phrasing, and Cleveland doesn’t even offer that. It’s structured a lot like an outdated live-action sitcom, with out of place touches like a talking bear and jokes about kindergartners with erections. And of course, there are cutaway jokes offering piercing commentary – Kathleen Turner looks old, R. Kelly likes getting peed on, and Dolly Parton has big boobs. The Parton joke in particular is so old it can legally buy booze.
And having the show focus on an African-American family just means more room for Seth MacFarlane to make more of his ham-handed jokes about race. And by “jokes”, I mean “people stating that the main character is Black”. In the whole half hour, I didn’t smile once. And I think bears are inherently awesome, so to not get a laugh out of a talking bear means that you’ve done a bad job.
The Prognosis: Absolute dreck. It’s not funny, the animation is sub-par, the character design is unappealing, and the voice work is shrill. Even if you like Family Guy, I don’t think you would enjoy this.
Brothers
FOX, Friday 8 PM
The Premise: A former professional football player returns home to live with his parents and 
wheelchair bound brother.
wheelchair bound brother.The Personnel: It’s created by Don Reo, who wrote for both Action and Blossom, which makes him half awesome. The star is Michael Strahan, who’s actually a football player. Or former football player. The rest of the cast includes Darryl Mitchell, who you remember from Veronica’s Closet. He was partially paralyzed in an accident some years ago, so that wheelchair is real. Their parents are played by the great Carl Weathers (Rocky, Arrested Development) and the even greater CCH Pounder (The Shield). Also, this comes out of Mitch Hurwitz’ production company, though he’s not actually involved with the show.
The Poop: At this point, Brothers is the only show on network TV with a primarily African-American cast. Basically, that means it’s going to be held to a higher standard, whether that’s fair or not. And when you have CCH Pounder, who just might be TV’s best actress, you’re held to an even higher standard than that.
In reality though, Brothers is merely competent, middle-of-the-road entertainment. Strahan is at least a competent sitcom actor, certainly better than Rick Fox or most of the athletes who’ve done voice work on The Simpsons. Most of the jokes are about the titular brothers bickering with one another. There are a lot of insults about Michael’s teeth and Chill’s wheelchair, and that’s pretty much it.
It’s pretty bland, but inoffensive. And that’s all right, really. Not every show has to break new ground or redefine the medium. It’s an old-school sitcom that’s not great but is certainly watchable. You won’t remember any of the jokes after the fact, but it won’t make you sad about America either. Still, it’s hard not to wish that CCH Pounder was doing something more worthwhile.
The Prognosis: An appealing cast does their best with average material. At least I laughed a couple of times, which is more than I can say for The Cleveland Show or The Jay Leno Show.
