How to fake a well-written Character to the untrained eye

One of the reasons The Cleveland Show failed was it's highly disingenuous Friend Group

Before we unwrap that let's briefly talk about some other aspects that led to Cleveland's cancellation and I mean actual cancellation, like getting off the air, not Joey Ryan cancellation where people got mad at him for, let's see, he had consensual sex with adults and nobody was harmed and nobody was illicitly filmed and there was no drugs or alcohol or foreign objects involved, well I don't know, but people got mad at me Joey Ryan, believe me

So to quote Tupac all eyes all eyes were on Cleveland, everyone knew low key that this was going to be the prestige Seth McFarlane Cartoon that showcased life from the perspective of an African American Family and that setup was the inevitable downfall

Now obviously there isn't a single kind of Black Family to make an archetype of and try to emulate or portray, Black Families can be very diverse and have varying ethos but unfortunately, the Seth McFarlane Machine in general suffered from Hollywood Writing

So let me briefly explain to you what Hollywood Writing is, imagine a Writers' Room full of White Guys of varying age demographics, you have your prodigies from the 24 - 32 demographic and then of course you have the real meat and potatoes who are the middle aged Writers making up that 32 - 54 demographic and you have a few legacy Writers from the 54+ demographic who basic flip the table and turn it into a vanity project, so basically apart from everyone being a White Guy the other thing everyone else has in common is that they're quick to pat themselves on the back

They're all quick to do surface level research and think that's good enough, they have a hair trigger to pat themselves on the back and maybe reach under the table and give a brisk shake and the of course call themselves the smartest Guys in the room, collectively, not excluding anybody, that's basically Hollywood Writing

It's that same ethos you see bleeding out to all kinds of American Media from Adult Animated Sitcoms to Porn

So basically Cleveland Show suffered from Hollywood Writing, it was ground breaking at the time but just because you broke ground doesn't mean you're going to be making a building that's going to add any value to the community

So the Writers' Room at Cleveland did something original and turned Cleveland's Family into what they thought a Black Family should be, and I'm going to be honest with you I actually liked the finished product, I think I've always been unequivocal about the fact that the Cleveland Show was one of my favourite Adult Animated Sitcoms

Brickleberry and Cleveland Show are my all time favourite Adult Animated Sitcoms regardless of their individual vices and why Brickleberry is my favourite despite Waco O'Guin and Roger Black being objectively failed Cartoonists is it's own Prestige Article

So Cleveland didn't act like a Black Person, his whole Family was weird and they didn't act like a typical Black Family either and that itself led to the slow demise of Cleveland Show but like I said, I liked the invention

I liked the Writers' Room projecting what they thought a Black Family should be onto Cleveland's Family instead of you know, actually hiring Black Writers and making Cleveland and his Family borderline realistic

That was the central problem right? Cleveland was both written and voiced by Mike Henry

The next problem was the total detraction of who Cleveland even was, Cleveland was little more than the token Black Guy back in Family Guy, he basically had no personality and let the rest of the Friend Group steamroll all over him, even Joe, who everyone dunks on for being a paraplegic

They took this token Black Character who they never got around to giving a personality to and then suddenly gave him a new personality, that was the most disingenuous bits of writing I have ever come across

Also why Virginia, I never understood the cultural significance of that whole thing, am I missing something here?

So basically Cleveland Show peeved every African American Fan and every Cleveland purist, that was a horrible start, and then of course there was the completely disingenuous Friend Group

They really tried to avoid giving Cleveland the same archetypes of Friends he had back in Rhode Island and it shows

Lester being a Redneck in Virginia made little sense and his Character in general was quite surface level or arbitrary, they gave him a gimmick of a morbidly obese Wife and that was about it

Holt was equally as random and out of place, apart from being a Midget and living with his Mom and having divorced Parents and having a total absence of a love life his Character was also more or less a desperate attempt at doing something unique

I think the Writers overexerted themselves in trying to be different from Family Guy and got burnt out doing that alone, we were left with a highly amorphous Friend Group that didn't go beyond the surface level

In my opinion only Tim the Bear had some actual meat to the bones, it just goes to show you that sometimes you don't need a well-written Character, sometimes you need a Character that has so many layers to them that they pass off as well-structured to the untrained eye and that's Tim

Let's take a look at Tim the Bear's layers, he's a first generation Hungarian Immigrant, he has a Bear Son who's a stereotypical stoner and isn't good at Sports much to his chagrin, he's actually timid and possibly docile and he's aware that he doesn't have a whole lot of charisma, I feel like all the Character Development went on Tim and his Family

Believe it or not there's even more to Tim, he's actually meta aware that he doesn't understand American Culture all that well and he tries to fit in and here's where that surface level under the table brisk jerking Hollywood Writing comes into play again, they didn't give Tim and his Wife - Arianna actual Hungarian idiosyncrasies that they couldn't shake off

Yes the Hungarian accent itself was a stroke of genius and Tim frequently prepares Hungarian dishes, I'll give the Writers credit where it's due but I'm not willing to meet them under the table just yet, they could've given Tim more Hungarian speech patterns which he could've been entirely unaware of or Tim could've frequently used Hungarian metaphors which of course mean nothing in the United States, it's the little things that would've really given the Character a fish out of water feeling

That's why Tim only appeared to be a well-written Character to the untrained eye, he had many interesting layers, he was close to being an actual well-written Character but the Writers never went that extra mile