"I'll Be Homeless For Christmas"

The Cleveland Show, S0E06

Cleveland pretended to be homeless in order to get free sandwiches and other things that were donated to the homeless during the Christmas season.  Roberta tried to encourage Kendra to become Santa, despite what the owner of Grundle's said.

Seeing Cleveland act like a homeless man just to get a ham sandwich doesn't really surprise me.  I'm more surprised that he didn't get found out sooner.  I didn't even think that Cleveland would learn anything from his misdeeds, especially when he tried to apologize and kept making his situation worse.  I guess overall, it turned out to be an okay story since Cleveland didn't just act like an ass and then smooth it over too easily.  Cleveland admitted that he was going to abandon his new friends at the shelter, but at least he got other people in town to perhaps think about giving to said ex-friends more often than a few days in December.

Nothing was really funny in the Cleveland story, but one moment almost got there.  This was when Tim saw Cleveland in line for food at the shelter and he thought he was looking at another black guy:

Come on, Tim the Bear, they don’t all look alike.  Don’t let Lester start rubbing one off on you.

Besides that, I could almost like the parody of "I'll Be Home For Christmas" that Cleveland did.  That song was a rare song in the whole Seth MacFarlane world that didn't make me cringe.  I'm not saying it was a great song, but it wasn't so bad that I wanted to mute the TV.  It was a good attempt to be funny, but just didn't get there for me.

In the Roberta story, I was excited to hear Nick Offerman as Mr.  Grundle.  He has the perfect voice for some kind of old-fashioned, sexist man.  I wish he had more lines because he almost made me laugh when he told Roberta:

I don’t hire boys to see their legs, and I don’t hire girls to hear them talk.

I think that was a nearly good joke because no matter how right Roberta is about something, her voice is so annoying that I want her to be quiet regardless.

The combination of Kendra and Roberta was kind of interesting since you don't see them in stories together.  But I didn't really care too much whether Kendra got the role of Santa or not.  I did like, though, that when she failed to bring presents for the kids, she told them to just quietly and confidently steal one present from the store.  At least she's resourceful.

There obviously wasn't enough Rallo or Junior in this episode, but Rallo did have a line that was also almost a good joke when Roberta told him not to be nervous:

Nervous? I got on five pair of underwear.  He ain’t getting in there.

I just like how nonchalant he is about a Santa molesting him or something.

Well, for a Christmas story this could have been worse.  It was all right, especially for this show because it usually makes me irritated.  Cleveland sort of fit in too well with the homeless, even if he was taking things from the needy for his own selfish needs.  It was nice to see the writers try and team up two characters who don't usually interact with each other, but this wasn't much of a match made in comedy heaven.  I would have rather seen Rallo get revenge on Santa or something (much like Riley from The Boondocks) than these other stories.  Can't help but feel disappointed in every episode where Rallo and Junior are just pushed to the background.