I loved King of the Hill and the Cleveland Show is going to have to undergo vast improvements if he wants to reach KOH's level. The pilot wasn't that good, but it took the American Dad show a while to find its legs too. So, I'm giving Cleveland a couple more chances to rope me in.
I think part of the problem is that Cleveland is the straight man to a lot of the craziness on Family Guy and its going to be hard building a show around him, unless its populated with more crazy people for him to play off of. He doesn't work as the off the wall guy to me. The cast seems like rip-offs of Family Guy. I wish they had tried to switch it up a little bit more than they did. They even made Cleveland Jr. fat to fit the Chris Griffin slot, it seemed. In earlier FG episodes, CJ was very slim. I guess he picked up the pounds over the years, but it just felt like an arbitrary 'creative' decision to me. I think the supporting cast for the Cleveland show is too weak, and too whitewashed. So, now all his friends will be white, except for the bear? And one of them a redneck to boot? Part of the problem is having only white writers. I read that McFarlane said he would rely on the black cast to make sure that things are not too culturally insensitive, but I wonder how much influence those cast members would really have.
It would be great if the writers had the capability to really explore/send up black pop culture like they have done with white pop culture on Family Guy, but I don't think that's going to happen. Or its going to come across as a white person's interpretation of what black people are like.
