WHILE I love Chris, I don’t really love “Everybody Hates Chris.”
And despite the fact that Chris Rock may, in fact, be the funniest man on the planet, his much-hyped sitcom, which debuts tonight, just doesn’t deliver his usual over-the-top rock ‘n’ roll.
But then again, maybe I’m just offended by his jumping on the relentlessly ignorant stereotyping of Italian-Americans as bigots, morons and uneducated slobs – which this show milks dry.
The show is based on Rock’s teen years growing up in Bed Stuy but traveling two hours by public transportation each day – at the insistence of his parents – to school in an Italian-American neighborhood.
First day of school, little Chris (played by the phenomenal Tyler James Williams) gets into a fight with a fat, gross kid, Caruso, who right off calls him “n- – – – -” and “Satchmo,” and “cornbread.”
Let me just point out that had I ever used those words in my Italian-American home I would have landed (courtesy of the back of my mother’s hand) in the next county.
I can’t imagine my own daughter ever heard those words when she was little -except on TV.
The cast’s mom (Tichina Arnold), dad (Terry Crews) and sibs – Drew (Tequan Richmond) and Tonya (Imani Hakim) – are all very, very good. But what’s missing here are the big laughs, despite Rock’s clever narration.
For example, when Chris gets into a dust-up with Caruso, he’s doesn’t duck out of the after-school fistfight because everybody knows that schoolyard fights are always broken up in a minute. Meantime, 30 minutes later they’re still fighting. Instead of both kids looking the worse for wear, they just get their shoes dirty. Who knew that Brooklyn in the ’80s was worse than Alabama in the ’50s?
It’s not that you can’t make fun of bigotry, it’s just that if you’re going to do it, and you’re going to do it on a sitcom, it better be hilarious-or it just becomes the very prejudice you’re trying to parody.
The premise is so promising, however, that there’s a good shot that the show will get funnier – Rock is too smart to not fix the flaws.
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“Everybody Hates Chris”
[**] (Two stars)
Tonight at 8 on UPN