More bad news for prime-time animation fans, as our friend Joe
Cab said in the comments to THIS POST, THE CLEVELAND SHOW has been cancelled,
joining other prime-time animated favorite, FUTURAMA. MSN is reporting the cancellation this morning.
 |
| I wish they were waving HELLO, instead of GOOD BYE! |
I had a feeling this might be the case because the series didn’t
seem to have a regular “8 PM-or Later” timeslot on FOX Sunday. It was shunted around, or was run at 7 or
7:30, a timeslot that always gave way during NFL Football season. Ironically, this is exactly how FOX treated
FUTURAMA at or near the end of its FOX run.
 |
| Something feels familiar about this, Bender! |
 |
| It was better to be "MOD" in the sixties, than now! |
I ordered that MOD DVD this week, unaware that it may be one
of the last times I get to see “...his happy, mustached face – on THE CLEVELAND
SHOW!"
 |
| I may be mustached, but I'm really not happy, trust me! |
On the bright side, THE SIMPSONS, FAMILY GUY, AMERICAN DAD, and BOB’S BURGERS are all being renewed by FOX, so that may be enough for a whole Sunday prime time (8-10 PM Eastern) for “Animation Domination” to continue.
2014 UPDATE: Well, maybe not AMERICAN DAD... see HERE.
Sure hope they finally find a spot for Seth MacFarlane’s
proposed FLINTSTONES, though.
2 comments:
I recall a popular theory that the only reason why Cleveland got a spinoff (and not Quagmire) was because Seth would have not been able to give enough time to oversee it without leaving "Family Guy" in other hands; "American Dad" is supervised by Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman, "Cleveland" by Mike Henry and Richard Appel. "Cleveland" was quite a gamble - there were some amusing moments in there, but a LOT of clunkers, too. It needed to find the right hook and didn't. I didn't like a lot of the supporting cast, and Cleveland himself had devolved a lot in order to try to make him "funnier". For a prime-time cartoon, it's done remarkably well for itself.
‘Rehab:
You may be right about THE CLEVELAND SHOW filing to find “the right hook”.
When it started out, it seemed to be aiming to be raunchier than the average prime-time animated series. See, especially, the First Season “Thanksgiving” show for an example of what I mean. I don’t think a made-for-network-TV animated product has EVER gotten raunchier than THAT one! …And, for what it’s worth, I liked it. I might not have wanted to see something like that EVERY WEEK, but I DID like it!
But, this was probably an approach that could not be sustained week-to-week, year-to-year, so it began becoming something of a clone of FAMILY GUY. Particularly, as you note, in the de-evolution of Cleveland himself.
On FAMILY GUY, Peter was the annoying dumbass, Quagmire was the sex-maniac, and Joe was the disabled cop with severe anger-management issues – but Cleveland (though “low-key”) was the “normal guy”. He lent an air of “normalcy” to the over-the-top on-goings of FAMILY GUY.
But, more recently, he’s become as annoying and dumb-assed as Peter, to where you can almost substitute one for the other, plot-wise. Perhaps he did become “funnier”, but he also became much harder to take. And, maybe we don’t need a second FAMILY GUY, while we still have the original.
That’s my theory, anyway. Sad to see it go.
Post a Comment