Throughout the fifty-year history of sitcoms, every imaginable gimmick has been tried to add a new twist to the basic formula of familiar characters getting themselves into and out of hilarious predicaments.
Sitcom smash "M*A*S*H" (1972-1983) found something to laugh about in the Korean War, and "Seinfeld" (1990-1998), which billed itself as a show about nothing, will likely enjoy an equally long afterlife in syndication.
"Everybody Hates Chris," which premiered on UPN last Thursday, is a show about the early life of Chris Rock, narrated by Rock himself. Far from joining the two aforementioned classic TV shows in the history books, though, "Everybody Hates Chris" seems destined to be quickly forgotten.
The first episode profiles Chris (Tyler James Williams) and his family as they move out of the projects and into a new neighborhood. Chris has his hands full trying to fit in at his new school, and his parents are also busy trying to manage the kids and pay the bills.
The episode is full of plenty of Rock's classic one-liners and jabs. In describing his new school's neighborhood, for example, he explains: "Much like rock and roll, school shootings were also invented by blacks, and stolen by the white man." Rock recounts his schooling as "Not a Harvard-type education, just a not-sticking-up-a-liquor-store-type education."
Even when the narrative is at its funniest, however, the show boils down to Chris Rock doing a comedy routine with his own life as the subject. While Rock is funny during on-stage appearances, because this is a family show on UPN, drugs, sex and swearing are all excised from his regular comedic vocabulary. Add that to the fact that all of his jokes must relate to the specific slow-paced plotline, and the result is Chris Rock's voice with a decidedly un-Chris-Rock tone.
Damaging the show further, the writers seemingly forgot that sitcoms are supposed to be comedies about situations (hence, SITcom). "Seinfeld" was successful because in every episode it managed to build up a set of intertwined premises between Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer, and then unravel them at the end in one climactic scene. Jerry's witticisms played second fiddle to the flow of the plot. This has been the case in scores of popular sitcoms, all the way from "I Love Lucy" (1951-1957) to "Friends" (1994-2004).
"Everybody Hates Chris" has it backwards. While the jokes are comical, the plot is anything but. As Chris starts attending his new all-white school, he trades harsh words with the school bully. The two have a fight after school and Chris laments messing up his new shoes, but predictably, everything turns out okay in the end, since he is able to clean them before his mom notices.
This series of events alone, without the omnipresent voice of Rock narrating, would not hold a viewer's attention past the first commercial. This is a boring show that Rock dubs over and adds jokes to, making it watchable and at some times funny, but no less inane.
If nowhere else, "Everybody Hates Chris" does a good job in one area - casting. Tichina Arnold, as Chris' mother Rochelle, is convincingly sassy as a mother trying to balance working with raising her kids. When Chris' brother Drew (Tequan Richmond) asks why he is wearing his new shoes to school, Rochelle snaps, "'Cause you only have one pair of feet."
Terry Crews, as Rock's father Julius, also turns in an agreeable performance as a penny-pinching and imposing father figure. Finding a half-eaten chicken wing in the garbage, he exclaims, "That's a dollar nine cent in the trash!" Still, the performance of the cast members alone isn't enough to make up for the failures of the writers.
As long as Rock is able to punctuate the boredom of the actual show with his post-production commentary, "Everybody Hates Chris" will not be a show entirely devoid of merit. However, without the traditional setup of clever, entertaining storylines, it is unclear how long this "sitcom" will keep anyone's attention.
