The Cleveland Show

For a more in-depth view of this show, see The Cleveland Show Wiki

The Cleveland Show is a spin-off from Family Guy by Seth MacFarlane, Mike Henry, and Richard Appel. It focused on the character of Cleveland Brown and his family. His new family includes his new spouse, Donna, her five-year-old son Rallo, teenage daughter Roberta and Cleveland Brown, Jr. also is in the family but is now fat. Cleveland Junior now wears glasses, and is now voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson instead of Mike Henry.

The show first acknowledged the spinoff at the end of televised versions of "Baby Not On Board", when Cleveland tells Quagmire that he's getting a spinoff. It is heavily discussed during the commentary of "Love, Blactually", where Henry even sings a small portion of the theme song while in character.

Plot

Many years ago, Cleveland Brown fell in love with the beautiful Donna. Unfortunately, Donna fell in love and married someone else. She promised Cleveland that if it didn't work out she would come to him. It didn't work out. Her man skipped town with another woman, leaving her with a teen daughter and a young son. Donna offers Cleveland a chance to win her over: by moving to the town of Stoolbend with his son Cleveland, Jr. He now lives with a new step-daughter and step-son and rather strange neighbors, including a loudmouthed redneck couple, a married pair of anthropomorphic woodland bears, and a hipster wannabe.

Significant Characters

• Cleveland Brown voiced by Mike Henry
• Cleveland Brown, Jr. voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson
• Donna Tubbs-Brown voiced by Sanaa Lathan
• Roberta Tubbs voiced by Nia Long (first 13 episodes) and Reagan Gomez-Preston
• Rallo Tubbs voiced by Mike Henry
• Tim the Bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane, later replaced by Jess Harnell
• Arianna the Bear voiced by Arianna Huffington
• Lester Krinklesac voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson
• Holt Richter voiced by Jason Sudeikis
• Gus voiced by David Lynch

Family Guy crossovers

• The Griffin Family, the Swansons, Quagmire and Herbert all appear in The Cleveland Show pilot, as the first scenes of the series take place in Quahog. They also attend the Tubbs-Brown Wedding.
• Loretta Brown, who was Cleveland's ex-wife, was mentioned in and made a cameo appearance in "Cleveland Jr. Cherry Bomb".
• Herbert and Meg made cameo appearances in "A Cleveland Brown Christmas".
• Broderick Brown, Cleveland's brother, made cameo appearances in "Our Gang" and "The Men in Me" with Chris also appearing in the former.
• Rallo closed the end of "Brown History Month" with "Stay tuned for an all new and all white Family Guy". Cleveland's departure from the show left Family Guy without a major minority character.
• The entire Griffin Family appears in a fake promotional bumper as a method of censoring Lester's usage of the 'N' word in "Once Upon a Tyne in New York".
• Quagmire brings Loretta Brown's body in "Gone with the Wind".
• In "You're the Best Man, Cleveland Brown", Herbert makes a cameo at the beginning, and Peter and Quagmire make cameos at the end. Quagmire even congratulates Cleveland for making it through the whole season and asks Peter for his own show but Peter points out that Quagmire is a rapist.
• Bruce made a cameo appearance in "Harder, Better, Faster, Browner", and realizes he's in the living room of the wrong show.
• Stewie appears in the beginning of "Cleveland LIVE!" during the "Great Moments in Animated TV History" narration. Peter and Lois are seen in the audience watching the performance.
• In "It's the Great Pancake, Cleveland Brown" Cleveland Brown, Jr. flashes back to a Halloween in Quahog where he dressed as Al Sharpton, and took candy from Herbert's house.
• Herbert appeared in Cleveland Brown, Jr.'s suitcase in "Murray Christmas", while Peter, Joe and Quagmire participated in the Beer Walk in "Beer Walk!". On the night both episodes initially aired, the latter episode pre-empted Family Guy's 9 PM timeslot.
• In "Ain't Nothing But Mutton Busting", stuffed Brian and Stewie toys are available at the fair. The booth runner calls Stewie "Stevie", and one of the sayings the Stewie toy has is an admittance that he's gay, a reference to Stewie's sexual confusion.
• In "To Live and Die in Virginia", Lester asks Cleveland if he ever wondered what the world would be like without him. The theme sequence begins, but with Glenn Quagmire singing the theme song to his spinoff, effectively visualizing what Quagmire thought in "Family Goy".
• In "BFFs", Peter comes to Stoolbend and Cleveland is upset that his best friend didn't call him to hang out. Several of the Family Guy characters make cameos, such as Loretta, Quagmire, and Brian and Stewie, who have lines in the episode, or are referenced, such as Meg and Bruce. The "Beer Walk" is also mentioned. In the end, Peter comes to Cleveland and his friends rescue with the help of the Evil Monkey.
• In "Die Semi-Hard", Bruce and Consuela made cameo appearances. Also in this episode, an unnamed character believed to be Bruce's boyfriend Jeffrey.
• In "A General Thanksgiving Episode", Herbert appears in the end of the song "I'm Paying a Young Boy for Sex".
• One of the dogs Junior and Rallo catch in "Hustle 'N' Bros." resembles Brian Griffin although the dog tells them that they are not the same.
• Consuela is featured in a mock commercial for NO perfume in "Wide World of Cleveland Show". Also, as Adolf Hitler, Cleveland discovers his writers are Jewish which he believes is why he ran a deli on Family Guy.
• In "California Dreamin'", Cleveland is overjoyed when he thinks he gets to return to Family Guy.
• Peter and Stewie appear as Pez dispensers that Robert Tubbs collects in "Wheel! Of! Family!".

The Cleveland Show crossovers on Family Guy

• At the end of "Spies Reminiscent of Us", after Brian and Stewie help Dan Aykroyd deactivate the missile in space, the debris falls on Cleveland's Stoolbend home and Tim says "I don't get it."
• Cleveland briefly returned to Quahog to witness Meg making out with Anthony in "Go, Stewie, Go!". He said it was worth the 500-mile drive just to see it.
• Cleveland, Donna, Cleveland, Jr., Rallo and Gus appear in "The Splendid Source".
• In "Baby, You Knock Me Out", Cleveland sends Peter an extensively long record-your-own-message birthday card for his birthday.
• The Quahog 5 News broadcast in "Road to the North Pole", in which Brian pleads with everyone to limit themselves to one Christmas gift a year for the sake of Santa Claus's health is broadcast all they way to Stoolbend. Cleveland is seen agreeing to limit himself, provided he doesn't get a gym membership.
• A fake promotional bumper from the show appears in "The Big Bang Theory".
• Tim is Wicket W. Warrick and Rallo is Nien Nunb in It's A Trap!.
• In "Back to the Pilot", Brian and Stewie travel into a future where Cleveland has returned to Family Guy after The Cleveland Show failed sometime in the next five years.
• Cleveland returns to go on a road trip with Peter, Joe and Quagmire in "Cool Hand Peter", while Donna hangs out with Lois and Bonnie. in addition, Peter has the theme song as his ringtone when he acknowledges that The Cleveland Show needs a ratings boost.
• A British version of Cleveland appears on "Family Guy Viewer Mail No. 2".
• Stewie gets a dig at The Cleveland Show in "Ratings Guy" by suggesting they watch the "black version of our show."
• Cleveland returns on "Yug Ylimaf", played the Bathtub Gag in backwards.
• In "Jesus, Mary & Joseph", Cleveland appears as one of The Three Wisemen.
• Death stops by The Drunken Clam when Cleveland visits and tells him he's there to collect his show in "3 Acts of God". Cleveland protests that he is only visiting while on vacation.
• Peter visits Cleveland in Virginia when he takes a whip from Quagmire's mail in "Herpe, the Love Sore". Joe tries to warn him, but Cleveland can't resist the temptation when Peter announces a grape soda-gram.
• A poster for The Cleveland Show appears during "Thank the Whites" in "Baby Got Black". Also, Peter, Quagmire and Joe prank call Cleveland in Virginia and pretend to be Loretta, having faked her own death to fool the IRS.

The end of The Cleveland Show is acknowledged when Cleveland simply walks back into The Drunken Clam in "He's Bla-ack!" and opens himself up to the humiliation from his friends.

When he is prank-called by Donna in "A House Full of Peters", Cleveland cries about once having his own show.

When Peter names people who should go on Quagmire's camping trip in "No Giggity, No Doubt", he names the cast of The Cleveland Show which is also shown in a group shot that includes numerous side characters.

Cleveland claims the introduction to Waquahog in "The Movement" would have been the Season 5 premier to The Cleveland Show.