Review: Hot in Cleveland ‘The Animated Episode’

Overview (Spoilers Below)

It’s the fourth year anniversary of when the girls came to Cleveland, but when they go to visit Elka, all the girls end up in a portal that turns everyone animated…even the dog!

Without getting into detail as to why everyone turned animated, the girls head on over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where they run into Steven Tyler from Aerosmith. In this world, Steven acts like a genie and Vic, Joy, and Mel wish for eternal, youth, and beauty. The wish sends the girls to Paris where they learn about the beauty of the soul, but Elka nabs the role of a Willy Wonka-esque host that transports the girls to a wonder-land of skincare products.

The episode continues as a Willy Wonka joint complete with Oompa Loompas, castmates taking advantage of the factory’s toys for modifications that don’t work out for Joy, Vic, and Mel. Thankfully, Steven Tyler saves the day and reverts everyone back to normal leaving the girls to wish that guys swarm the women like zombies…literally. Surprisingly enough, all of the girls are adept at killing zombies and do a good job of doing so! So much so the girls decide to take a bunch of strewn body parts and create four perfect guys…all of them celebrities…gay celebrities. Betty steps in and sets all of the guys back to woman-lusting dudes, but after three weeks the girls get sick of their significant others. One zombie later, all of the guys get eaten.

The third wish? Lebron James NOT leaving Cleveland. Turns out Lebron wins the NBA title for the Cavs leading to the rest of the sports teams to win and making everyone attractive. The girls HATE the town and decide to ask Lebron James to turn Cleveland back to normal. He does just that…AGAIN and Cleveland goes into disarray. When the citizens of Cleveland find out the girls are responsible, so the ladies ask Steven Tyler to bail them out. The girls snap their fingers and BOOM everyone goes back to live-action…except the dog! We then get a really cool behind-the-scenes of how the actresses voiced their animated counterparts.

According to Betty we may not get another one of these, but kinda hope we do because as someone who has never seen Hot In Cleveland, I was quite enamored with the production of this episode. For starters, the show’s producers did it right by getting Titmouse to animate this episode and you can see their fingerprints all over this. From the luscious colors derived from the Willy Wonka-inspired world to the futuristic backgrounds in crazy detail of ‘modern-day Cleveland’, these guys did it right. And who would have thought that the episode writers KNEW that Lebron James would be a Cleveland Cav when this episode aired? The episode had been in production for a while, so I doubt THAT many changes were made in the last few weeks to reflect Lebron leaving Miami and coming back to his own city…BUT IT SURE LOOKED LIKE IT. And yes, love him or hate him, Lebron James was pretty hysterical.

I loved Steven Tyler playing a genie, and I was loving the Simpsons ”Treehouse” organization of the episode which brought us what was basically three animated shorts all rolled into one 30-minute episode. Unfortunately, the live-action portions of the episode lacked any sort of plot or proper launch to get you excited and I’m wondering if they were even needed. In any case, the producers of Hot In Cleveland did a pretty damn good job in their first animated run…maybe TV Land should look into more?