FOX’s Sunday night animation domination block has taken on a new shape in the past couple of years with the introduction of The Cleveland Show and the new Bob’s Burgers. The animation domination block spans from old favorite to new annoyances. Let’s take a look at what FOX has to offer on Sunday nights:
Bob’s Burgers
To fill the void left by the cancellation of King of the Hill, FOX put Bob’s Burgers into its lineup as a midseason replacement. The Lauren Bouchard-created series follows Bob Belcher and his family as they run (sort of) their own burger joint. Burgers stars the great voice-over actor H. John Benjamin, as well as noted comedians Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal. The show’s humor is extremely deadpan, and the jokes almost seem to slip through without the viewer even noticing. If you’re a fan of deadpan comedy, especially fans of Adult Swim-type animated humor, you may dig Burgers’ vibe. The storylines on Bob’s Burgers sometimes tend towards the hackneyed (in the pilot episode, Bob forgets that it is his wedding anniversary), but the cast is so talented that they make up for any flawed writing. H. John Benjamin is great here as Bob; his talent as a voice-over actor shines and may be enough to sustain the show through any bumpy writing they may experience in their first season.
B
The Simpsons
Long-time fans of TV’s longest running prime-time cartoon have long been rumbling about the decline of The Simpsons. True, the series will never return to the quality of its heyday, but The Simpsons’ 22nd season has seen a considerable bump in quality from its past few seasons. True, after over 20 years of stories, it must be nearly impossible to think up new story arcs. The biggest problem The Simpsons often has is keeping its tone current. For a long time, The Simpsons felt like your favorite grandpa; He may not be able to move around like he used to, but you always appreciated the fact that he was still trying. Their best bet is to expand on the long-loved characters and running gags of Springfield and apply them to the present so they stay relevant. The most recent episode uses one of the best Simpsons gags to their advantage. The episode entitled “Angry Dad: The Movie” takes Bart’s “Angry Dad” cartoons, a longtime staple of the series, and has it adapted into a short film. The episode centers around taking the movie on the awards circuit, a perfectly current satire of the film industry and its award season. As long as they use their assets to keep themselves current, The Simpsons can considerably improve their reputation as TV’s live-in grandpa.
B+
Family Guy
And now we enter the realm of Seth McFarlane. Family Guy has become, essentially, a paean to the disinterested TV viewer. McFarlane and company have had fun over the years playing with sitcom tropes, but now that the series is getting up in age, the act has grown stale. Family Guy is now in its ninth season, and as a viewer, I can’t honestly
say that I have grown to really connect with any of the characters. I haven’t seen any growth or development. Animated
shows are usually the culprits of this crime, but they get a lot of leeway by virtue of the tone of their shows. Family Guy has gotten tons of leeway over the years, but it seems to me that their time is running out. The show’s signature cut-away gags have gotten their fair share of ridicule over time, and for good reason. It’s easy to write an episode and tell a story when you can shoehorn jokes into your script that have no bearing on the episode itself. It comes off as lazy TV writing catered to the lazy TV viewer. None of this is to say that Family Guy can’t churn out a few laughs every now and then, the show still has the potential to be uproariously funny, and it often is, but the format leaves for more to be desired with respect to characters and story.
C
The Cleveland Show
Way back in season one of The Cleveland Show, there’s a moment in which Quagmire (making a cameo appearance) asks why Cleveland got the spin-off and he didn’t. Throughout the run of The Cleveland Show, I’ve found myself asking the same question. I’m not entirely sure why the producers chose Cleveland as a character to use in a spin-off.
When he was on Family Guy, Cleveland’s antics were mostly pleasant side-gags, but The Cleveland Show essentially takes Cleveland and shoves him into the same formula as Family Guy with a different family in a new town. The parallels are easy to make between The Cleveland Show and Family Guy, right down to the wisecracking toddler. At this point, it’s hard to see how The Cleveland Show has differentiated itself from Family Guy. The formula is very similar and the jokes, while not necessarily cut-away gags, walk that same line of McFarlane playfulness and straight-up nastiness. A season later, it’s still hard to tell why Cleveland was chosen as the center of a Family Guy spin-off, but it remains to be seen whether or not The Cleveland Show can make a name for itself instead of staying comfortably in the shadow of its predecessor and quietly reinforcing Seth McFarlane’s plans for world domination.
D
American Dad!
If you were to ask me for a list of underrated TV shows, American Dad! would certainly make the list. AD! has become the dark horse of FOX’s animation domination block, consistently out-performing not only its sibling McFarlane shows, but also the rest of FOX’s animated programming. The tone of American Dad! is markedly different than that of Family Guy or The Cleveland Show. The pop-culture gags are still there, but the characters on AD! are much more fleshed out, particularly in the lead role. The character of Stan is much more developed than Cleveland or even Peter. Stan is easily identifiable as the CIA agent and staunch Republican that strives tocreate the perfect American family. The jokes on AD! come from the personalities of the characters rather than easy pop-culture digs and cut-away gags. American Dad! has been renewed for two more seasons. Hopefully, AD! can continue to show the rest of the animation domination block how it’s done.
A
