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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."
Even better, more futurama.
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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.
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?!)
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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: ;)