Everybody Hates Chris

Okay gang, here's what I'm looking forward to in the new fall season. Slip on your reading socks and enjoy:

1. The return of South Park: Many shows have a tendency of starting off strong and then entering a slow decline if they stay on for too long. South Park is one series that I think has actually improved with every season, and last season's episodes, most notably the two-part "Cartoon Wars," contained some of the most hysterical and vicious jabs at every religion, political affiliation and societal norm you could think of. As Stan so rightly points out, either everything is okay to make fun of, or nothing is. That mantra is what makes South Park still one of the best shows on television, even as it enters its tenth year.

2 and 3. New Adult Swim shows from the creators of Home Movies and Sealab 2021: Brendon Small created one of my favorite shows of all time, Home Movies. His new Metalocalypse, which he created with Tommy Blacha (a writer for Conan and TV Funhouse) won't have the same poignancy of Home Movies, but that's just fine with me. Also, the crew behind Sealab 2021, an Adult Swim "classic" if it's not too early to use such a term, are also returning with Frisky Dingo, the tale of a super hero named Awesome-X whose secret identity is that of Xander Crews, a billionaire who makes money from the toys based on his alter ego. He battles Killface, an evil mastermind who wants to plunge the Earth into the sun, but only if he doesn't lose interest in his plan. I'm anxious to see how both of these shows fare.

(S01E22) The season finale of Everybody Hates Chris wasn't exactly a laugh riot, and it may have even relied on a few sitcom cliches, but nevertheless I thought it was a good way to end the season. A nice and poignant tribute to fathers and Father's Day.

All Chris' father Julius wants is to be left alone for Father's Day. As the elder Rock explains in the beginning, Mother's Day has always outranked Father's Day in order of importance. Of course, most dads really don't mind that at all. If they can have one day when they're not being asked for money or to fix things around the house, they're content. In fact, that's exactly what Julius wants, to have the house all to himself for one day.

(S01E22) This is interesting. The title of this episode is either "Everybody Hates Dreamgirls" or "Everybody Hates Jail," I've seen it listed as both. Odd.

Anyway, last night's episode focused on Chris having to sell thirty boxes of cookies to pay for a field trip to Washington DC. Of course, his teacher informs him that if "his people" can't pay money for the cookies, they can always use food stamps. Meanwhile, both his younger siblings get chicken pox, and their father offers to stay home while Rochelle goes to see Dreamgirls with a friend, rather than going with Julius for their anniversary as they originally planned.

(S01E20) In this age where depictions of sexual fantasies which cover the entire spectrum from mildly titillating to mind-bogglingly depraved are available to anyone with an internet connection, a television episode about a kid swiping his dad's Playboy almost seems like something Norman Rockwell would have painted.

Those of us who grew up before the advent of the internet each have our own story about the time we first discovered our dad's hidden treasure of skin mags. I grew up on a farm and discovered my father's collection of Playboys from the '70s and '80s in an old wooden shed, resting inside a stack of dresser drawers. Like any boy who was too young to really be interested in sex yet, I found the magazines to be equal parts fascinating and repulsive. As much as our parents would try to protect us from such things, discovering those magazines was a kind of rite of passage for many young boys. You didn't know what you had found exactly, but it opened a window into the grown-up world you never knew existed. These days, that window no longer exists. In fact, the whole damn wall has been removed and replaced by an endless digital conduit of smut pouring out of the computer monitor of anyone with the ability to type the word "boobs" into Google's search field. An old copy of Playboy with nothing more than a nude female lounging next to a fireplace seems downright quaint.

Last night's episode of Everybody Hates Chris focused on a sibling rivalry between Chris and his younger brother Drew, who is better than Chris in everything that matters to young teenage boys, especially fighting and getting girls. Jealous, Chris decides to enroll in a karate class, where his instructor informs the class that karate is about learning ways to kill people, and then not doing it.

I grew up with two siblings, an older sister and a younger brother, and all three of us were so radically different in our personalities and interests that there was never any real jealously between us. I couldn't really empathize with Chris' desire to do something better than his little brother, but I do remember wanting to take karate at a young age. My reason for wanting this, as is the case for most boys, was so I could beat the living crap out of anyone who tried to beat me up at school. I never did take lessons, but I did develop my own form of karate which involved placing one foot in front of the other, and using this motion to propel myself quickly in the opposite direction of my assailant.

(S01E18) If you bail Chris out every time he doesn't like something, that means he's going to run to you every time he has a problem, which means he'll never learn how to be a man. And if you can't teach him to be a man that means you're a bad father. And if you're a bad father, that means I picked the wrong husband. And if you think I'm about to let people run around here talking about "I just marry anybody" you must be out your damn mind. -- Chris' mom

Last night's episode was directed by creator and narrator Chris Rock. This is the first time he's helmed an episode since the show debuted last year.

We've known since the first episode that Chris doesn't get along with anyone at his school, including the faculty, save for his friend Greg and one teacher who mistakenly sees Chris as an endless font of information on black history and culture. After being duped into an ambush in which he's bombarded with water balloons filled with white paint, Chris asks his parents to let him transfer to a new school. His mother wants Chris to tough it out, but she eventually caves in. Of course, once Chris realizes he could actually be stabbed to death at his new school rather than just punched out on occasion, he decides to go with the lesser of two evils and returns to his old school.

I remember briefly receiving an allowance when I was growing up, but for the most part I never received any kind of weekly stipend from my parents, nor did I ever ask for one. It was pretty much understood when we were growing up that money had to go to more important things like food and shelter, and like Chris' father in last night's episode, on those rare occasions when I would ask for money I would get a speech from my father about all the free food and utilities I was able to enjoy on a daily basis without having to work at all.

Chris' father, in some ways, reminds me of my own father, but he's probably like anyone's father who worked more than one job to support a family. There's a great moment in the episode where Julius (Chris' father) is trying to squeeze the last little bit of toothpaste out of the tube. It's shown for about two seconds, but it illustrates how important it is for him to make money stretch as far as it can go. When Chris decides he wants a leather jacket like everyone else seems to have, his father lets him come to work with him. The work turns out to be much more difficult than Chris bargained for, but their night together adds a new dimension to their relationship. By the end of the episode Chris has a better understanding of who his father is and how hard he actually does work.

Last night's episode seemed more character driven and less reliant on "gags" than other episodes, and it also focused heavily on the financial situation of the family, which is what really draws me to the show. Too many sitcoms focus on affluent families, or people who live extravagantly without any visible means of support. Those shows aren't bad necessarily, but when I watch Everybody Hates Chris I feel a kind of empathy and camaraderie toward the characters I never felt, say, listening to Mr. Huxtable steer the ever-malleable Theo on the right track with some instantaneous words of wisdom. Chris is funny, not just because the writing and jokes are solid, but because the characters actually feel like real people.

When you're young and a grandparent passes away, it can be a surreal experience. You see weird relatives you never see normally, and people bring all kinds of food to your home, as if stuffing your face with tiny ham sandwiches is better than talking about your feelings. What can be especially disconcerting, though, is watching your parent deal with their own parent's death. They're no longer the stalwart pillars of authority they once appeared to be. In a word, they become human.

Last night UPN managed to sneak another new episode of Everybody Hates Chris on the air, and this one dealt with the death of Rochelle's father, played by Jimmie Walker. When the extended family descends on their home, Rochelle becomes more aloof and detached, finding respite and solitude in her box of Turtles chocolates. Chris becomes concerned for his mother, and begins to lash out at family members who give her a hard time.

Given the subject matter, this wasn't going to be the funniest episode of the season, but it managed to delve deeper into the character of Chris' mom, which I appreciated. When the show opens we're treated to a montage of Chris' mom yelling at each of her kids and her husband. It ends with her actually yelling at herself in the mirror. The scene is funny enough, but it's in stark contrast to the mousy person she becomes once her family shows up. If a funeral episode seems trite and cliche, you're right, it is. But at least it gave us a chance to pull back yet another layer of one of the characters.

Last night's episode of Everybody Hates Chris was a rerun, so I didn't watch it. However, I did tune in for the last few minutes and noticed something I didn't catch when I watched it before. The family is sitting around the table, and Julius, the father, who works several different jobs, is wearing a pair of overalls with the name "Overlook Hotel" over the left pocket. Would that be the same fictional Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's novel The Shining? What exactly was his job there, cleaning up the blood every time the elevator doors opened? I thought it was pretty cool, though I'm not sure what the point was exactly.

I'm hoping that UPN (soon to be the CW) has some kind of mysterious plan for Everybody Hates Chris that only it understands, because I've been genuinely confused by how the last few episodes of this season have been doled out. The show has been in reruns, but once in awhile, like last night, they'll toss a new one out there. On the surface, it appears as if UPN has abandoned a show they once touted quite enthusiastically by sneaking new episodes past fans. I'm hoping that isn't the case, that perhaps the show is just ending its first season with a fade out in preparation for a big second season.

Last night's episode focused on two storylines, Chris' father getting the gout from eating heavily-salted food, including, according to one sequence, "chicken-fried bananas" and Chris himself getting an F in math and trying to fool his parents into thinking he got an A. Math is the only class in which Chris can't get a passing grade, as his all-white school seems to give him a free pass as long as all his reports have to do with Martin Luther King, Jr. Taking advantage of the ignorance of white people is a reoccurring theme on the show. Everybody Hates Chris doesn't just focus on blatant racism, it also points the finger at those who work feverishly to seem "black friendly" but ironically ignore the individual. When Chris is at home, or hanging out with his friend Greg at school, he's just a regular kid. It's when his teachers single him out in class to talk about black history, or the basketball coach asks him to join the team without seeing him play, that he becomes a "black kid." Chris Rock has said before that races have much more in common with one another than people realize, and that when its all laid out, the differences are few and inconsequential. That seems to be the guiding ethos of Everybody Hates Chris, and it's what makes the show both hysterical and thought-provoking.

The latest episode of Everybody Hates Chris, which centered around Valentine's Day, had several laugh out loud moments and more than made up for last week's episode, which, while still good, could have been better.