Cleveland Brown

This article is about the Family Guy character. For the professional American football team, see Cleveland Browns.

Cleveland Brown, Sr. is a character on the animated television series Family Guy. He is one of Peter Griffin's neighbors and friends as well as one of the few recurring African American characters on the show. His name is a reference to the Cleveland Browns professional football team. He is voiced by Mike Henry.

History

Family

Cleveland was married to Loretta Brown. The couple had a son, Cleveland Junior. Cleveland also has a brother named Broderick, a plastic surgeon who makes an appearance in the episode "He's Too Sexy For His Fat."

Personality

Cleveland is something of an enigma. While Cleveland is usually shown as gentle and non-threatening, he occasionally has violent outbursts. For example, at various times during the show, Cleveland has shot Skeet Ulrich, tried to kill Glenn Quagmire after finding out he slept with his wife, and vandalized Brian's taxi after Brian accidentally drove past him, and didn't pick him up as a taxi driver. Still, despite these flareups, Cleveland remains one of the most levelheaded characters on the show, often trying to be a voice of reason for other characters and their harebrained schemes. His speech is very slow and elongated due to a strike to the head he suffered while he was an Auctioneer. Two moving men knocked over a totem pole which slowed his speech. He is unbelievably naive sometimes and does not use metaphors or any such language- preferring to use blunt and somewhat archaic statements in his usual longwinded manner. He shows a stereotypically racist point of view, perhaps mainly due to pressure from his wife, who herself does not allow white literature in the house and argues that white people should not be allowed to play sports.

Cleveland and Peter

Cleveland and Peter met one night, presumably in the early-mid 70's, when Peter was attempting to hitchhike a ride back to Rhode Island. Assuming from their dialogue, Cleveland had recently been dating or married to a woman named Maxine and she had cheated on him. This probably motivated him to hit the road. After an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan (who Peter thought were ghosts) near the South Carolina border, Peter and Cleveland arrived in Rhode Island, where Cleveland stayed and moved into a house across the street from the Griffins. Peter is also the witness of the miracle that Cleveland performed of making a cow fly as a kite.

"The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire"

Cleveland and Loretta divorced after she had an affair with Quagmire, citing Cleveland's lack of passion as the reason for her infidelity, in the episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire". After a short burst of rage, Cleveland forgave Glenn and the two remained friends (Quagmire, however, insisted that the two box to make up for it, in a reference to the end of Rocky 3).

Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story

In Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the red carpet intro has Cleveland coming out of his limo saying that he has a new clothing line, C.C. Brown, in Quahog. C.C. Brown is the name of a Houston Texans' rookie strong safety, although there is no connection.

In the future, Cleveland is mostly bald with white hair around the sides of his head. He uses a wheelchair and speaks even slower than he does currently.

Other

The voice of Cleveland is provided by Family Guy writer Mike Henry (who is white) and his speech is often stereotypically black: in the episode "One If By Clam, Two If By Sea," he is seen in the 1980s dressed in a similar way to the band, Run DMC and he says "Oh that's fly."

His great uncle Chet has been seen in the episode Fifteen Minutes of Shame but Chet was already dead (sometime between the Tonight Show and the Today Show).