REVIEW: THE CLEVELAND SHOW “Hustle ‘N’ Bros”

The Cleveland Show is back, but are we just being hustled with a cliched plot?

Spoilers Below

Donna wants Cleveland to be nice to her ex-hubby Robert and makes him invite the guy to a cookout with special guests Cleveland’s parents in town.. Turns out its Freight Train’s birthday and the Browns are celebrating, but the old man quickly grows bored until Robert flashes boxing tickets in Vegas leaving Cleveland in the dust. On the return back, Freight Train decides to adopt Robert as his son because he always wanted a fit sun that was cool. Later, Cleveland heads on over to his dad’s house to try and smooth things over but instead finds Robert there. After a night of poker playing, Train offers to let Robert sleep over in Cleveland’s former bedroom and the former resident isn’t happy about it. Robert and Cleveland get into a fight and Freight yells at them which actually helps them bond over the fact that they both are yelled at by their old man. Robert opts to teach Cleveland how to be cool for his dad’s approval showing him how to hustle.

After taking him to a warehouse with cheap products, Cleveland dons a new outfit and takes part in a big hustle but really Robert’s the one pulling the strings. At first Cleveland does a couple of the jobs for his bro with great success, but he soon figures out that he’s been had and looks to get revenge. Eventually, he finds the son of a bitch at his house tryna take Cleveland’s life. When Freight Train finds out he spanks Robert with Cleveland admitting he’s the biggest hustler in town.

Meanwhile, Rallo and Junior broke Donna’s expensive musical instrument and she makes them come up with the $1100 to replace the rare piece. They decide to do so by becoming dog bounty hunters, in other words the Brown/Tubbs combo goes out and finds all of the missing dogs in the neighborhood in exchange for cash.  After a while, the guys stop collecting a bunch of the poor people’s dogs and instead decide to go for the expensive fish when they see a flier for a dog with an award of 5 grand on its label. Eventually, they do find the cute puppy but Rallo starts to show affection for his new capture but with Donna threatening harm on Larry, Junior can’t afford to lose out on the score.

Junior grabs the new dog without Rallo not looking, but turns out that the guy who posted the ad doesn’t want the dog so he lets them have it WITH the reward, therefore Larry is saved and Donna’s got her instrument.

Cutaway Gags

Marriage

I actually like Craig Robinson a lot and always have enjoyed him playing Cleveland’s dad for all these seasons, but I wasn’t really feeling it this episode for The Cleveland Show. I feel like we always get Cleveland trying to prove his worth to either Donna or his parents every other week and it just sort of becomes run-of-the-mill at this juncture. The other plot was pretty funny however and I sometimes forget how adorable Rallo and Junior can be, and this was shown during their pirate fight. Also, I loved the dog with Rallo and Donna’s threats towards Larry was pretty hysterical. Hell, maybe if we had less of Cleveland, this would’ve been a decent episode, but alas mediocrity is the name of the game this week.

Score

7/10

Bubbleblabber's Review System