Returning Series Review: Everybody Hates Chris (The CW)
10/01/06 11:08 AM
By ED BARK
Led by the second season premiere of Everybody Hates Chris, here's network TV's last homefront for "urban" comedies with predominantly black casts.
The new CW, risen from the defunct WB and UPN networks, has colored in Sundays rather than Mondays and Wednesdays, as UPN did. Chris bats leadoff for his new team, followed by fellow UPN carryovers All of Us and Girlfriends, plus newcomer The Game. Overall visibility? It's down several notches, with pro football runovers likely to hurt Chris most of all this fall.
Returning Oct. 1 at 6 central, 7 eastern, Chris is still narrated by Chris Rock, with a growth-spurting Tyler James Williams again playing him as an embattled kid in 1984 Brooklyn. The new season's first two episodes feature guest star Whoopi Goldberg as new next door neighbor Louise Clarkson. She's basically a busybody from Queens who insists on forming a crime watch committee.
Meanwhile, Chris falls for another newcomer, a girl named Yvette (Cherelle Noyd). Freshly scented with girl-luring cologne, he asks her to see Footloose with him. But you know how it is with Chris. His younger but more adult-looking brother, Drew (Tequan Richmond), keeps fighting off suitors while Chris gets short-shrifted. This time the poor kid is left cooling his heels in front of the Footloose marquee after getting all dressed up in a white suit and pink shirt.
"I'd go find that girl, take her by the hair and shake her like an Etch-a-Sketch," says an old-timer who owns the small grocery store where Chris works parttime. That line should have hit the cutting room floor.
This isn't one of the show's stronger episodes, with too much focus on Whoopi and not enough on Chris's parental units, terrifically played last season by Tichina Arnold and Terry Crews. Narrator Rock, who's also the show's co-executive producer, remains an enthusiastic participant. Best line: "I asked Yvette out after I got famous. She stood me up and went out with Chris Tucker."
Everybody Hates Chris remains one of prime-time's better comedies. But can it stand the test of time in a much tougher Sunday night slot? In this view, probably not. Hate it when that happens.
Grade: B