Review: Everybody Still Hates Chris “Everybody Still Hates The GED; Everybody Still Hates Block Parties”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chris gets slapped so hard he loses a dimension, and later, he attends a block party.

OUR TAKE

You know what’s the most surprising about this? That they’re still premiering new shows on Comedy Central. As in the CHANNEL on TV and not streaming. That snake is gonna run out of its own tail to eat at some point, but in the meantime, here’s an animated sequel to the beloved(?) live action autobiographical comedy, Everybody Hates Chris, about the childhood of Chris Rock. That show premiered just over nineteen years ago and ended a few years later in 2009, so it’s safe to say no one was really thinking about it up until recently. But for whatever reason, it’s getting a sequel series that’s animated so they can replace the child actors with voice actors. But also, it does act as a SOFT reboot, so anyone who never watched the old show (like me) isn’t lost on the premise or any of the characters they have to reintroduce. Picking up exactly where the series finale left off, Chris finds out he failed his GED, which he took to avoid dealing with bullies at his high school, and so must attend that school once again. But antics ensue, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a show. And we’re getting two episodes at a time so I guess Paramount is really trying to burn this show off as fast as possible.

So, how are these first two episodes? Well, they’re fine as regular episodes of a period piece show with an urban setting and a black cast. I am not the biggest Chris Rock fan, being only really familiar with his work in the first couple Madagascar films, but even I know that he is a very established comedian whose name carries a lot of weight, even as he approaches his sixties. I’m not going to go back and watch any of the old show since I shouldn’t have to, but I’m guessing I won’t really need to anyway since the characters very quickly establish their personalities very strongly, even if they do feel like stock archetypes at least for now. We’ve got all of the background out of the way, we can properly focus on the episodes coming in the weeks ahead and go balls deep into some Chris Rock lore, which is absolutely what I was dreaming of when I first started this job of doing short form reviews of cartoons.