Review: The Cleveland Show ‘Of Lice and Men’

 

Spoilers Below

Rallo is typically the one to levy nicknames at kids during class, but after Donna checks his hair for lice after a school outbreak warning, she sees that guess  what?? He’s got them! Cleveland decides to move in with his mother in fear. Fortunately, it looks as though Cleveland’s gonna have the house to himself because the ‘rents leave. Before they go, Cleveland’s parents forbid Cleveland from letting friends in the house, but he does anyway. After stokin’ on a black and mild,  the guys start chuggin’ on Freight Train’s stash of RC Cola, but when they look to get more the crew finds out that the entire state of Virginia no longer carries the once popular soda brand. Instead, the guys have to head to Kentucky to get a whole bunch more. After a long trip, the guys get to the convenience store, they buy up some RCee, then they take off. The guys make it home and put all of the soda in the fridge, but not before Freight shows up and he’s got some back up, a belt and the collective fathers of Tim, Colt, Lester, Cleveland, and the Dr. That said, they all show up to pass on symbols of achieved manhood and to celebrate they crack open some RCee.

Meanwhile, Rallo darts when he hears that he has to get his hair cut to the point of the little guy going bald. To try and help, Donna sends Rallo to school with one of her wigs, but he isn’t exactly thrilled with it.  The kids at school eventually pull the wig off revealing Rallo to be bald and alas now he has a nickname.  The next day at school, the kids again take off whatever covers Rallo’s head and they dress him up as ‘Mr. Peanut’ to go along with his new nickname of ‘Peanut Head’.  To try and get some levity on the situation, Rallo turns to Cleveland whom introduces Rallo to a stuffed zebra then teaches him all about make-believe complete with an intergalactic space adventure. After they get back, Junior shaves Rallo’s head so that he will forever have a play mate. But, despite the fact that he keeps winning at bored games and gets a whole bunch of ice cream, Rallo begins to miss hanging out with his friends even more so when he gets invited to do some go-carting. As a result, Junior feels bad about shaving his brother’s head so he decides to let him grow it back.  Eventually, Rallo’s hair grows back enough in time for his trip to go do up carts, but not before he shares one last imaginative nod with his bro Junior.

First thing’s first….fuck you NASCAR. Next, on the same night as American Dad’s space adventure, the one for Cleveland Show stacks up pretty well. Also, I loved that Kevin Michael Richardson (Junior) was able to show off his vocal abilities a bit more in this one and I actually think the whole ‘Gollum’ type personality would have been a fun story arc to explore. The Cleveland plot was some what of a let down, as we had a couple of good setups muddled by a montage, two drive over scenes, a stop at a convenience store that wasn’t that funny, and then no trip back. The cameos with all of the dads seemed like a cool idea, but was poorly executed. That said, this episode still WAY better than NASCAR.