"Everybody Hates Minimum Wage (Everybody Hates Chris)", 11-19-2007

You know that comedies are struggling when they begin to stretch the borders of disbelief. Last week's episode of "Everybody Hates Chris" called "Everybody Hates Houseguests" stretched disbelief beyond the breaking point, and whereas the boundaries are returning to their previous shape, they are not quite fixed again.

Chris works at a convenience store called "Doc's". However, he reads in the paper that the minimum wage is $3.35/hour. Chris is only being paid $3/hour and he convinces himself that he should stand up for his rights and ask Doc for a raise. He seems himself as a good worker and believes taht he deserves the money. However, Doc won't budge -- $3 it is. Of course, Chris always has the option of going on strike (and in some bad sitcoms, he would), but he imagines white policemen beating him up and decides to give Doc one more chance by presenting him with an ultimatum -- either Chris earns his raise or walks out the door. Doc simply says, "nice working with you".

This leaves Chris unemployed, and he figures he dare not tell his father that he walked away from a job -- his father works two, three jobs, and sometimes more. Chris, desperate to find another job that will pay minimum wage, goes to work for a Chinese restaurant. Unfortunately for Chris, the owner is a harsh taskmaster, and Chris doesn't have time to rest on his broom. Furthermore, Doc let Chris do his homework during down times, but there are no down times at the restaurant. To add insult, since Chris is not only the only non-Asian employee at the restaurant, but the only black employee, Chris is called "Lionel Richie" by his new boss and Chris suspects that he's referred to in less complementary terms behind his back.

Meanwhile, Rochelle has her sights set on being a hair model in the local hair show presented by the beauty shop, and finally begs a place for herself. We learn that the hair styles at the hair show would make a Japanese topiary specialist suffer a stroke -- Rochelle will be modeling "the Tsunami", which is a rarely used style as the last model who tried it suffered from hairspray poisoning. Rochelle's hair is soon coiffed into a living wave, and all is well -- until Rochelle learns that the show is more than a day away and Rochelle cannot lie down or she'll destroy her do.

Chris tries to see how his old job is coming along. As it turns out, Chris's job is now taken by James, a young boy who likes Chris's sister, Tonya. Chris despairs that he could ever get his old job back without giving up his principles.

Chris's new boss, meanwhile, decides to extend the restaurant to delivery. (Why not? He figures that since Chris is black, he should get along fine.) However, restaurants in Bed-Stuy didn't have delivery service, for good reason. (One of Doc's customers says that he has kids in Bed-Stuy -- but he never visits them because it's too dangerous.) Chris is forced to deliver Chinese food to crack houses and tenement apartments. When he bumps into a domestic dispute with a wife who punctuates her arguments with her husband with a large firearm, Chris flees the scene.

Drew turns out to be failing history, and Rochelle and Julius figure its their job to investigate -- however, Rochelle can't risk her new do, so Julius goes out Drew's school to figure out what's up. It turns out that Drew's teacher is a great-looking woman, and no male in the class can think straight. Transferring Drew to another history class turns out to be the solution, but the effort for Rochelle to remain awake is too much and her do is destroyed.

Chris gets his paycheck -- with taxes, FICA, etc. removed. He's actually earning less at the restaurant! Chris finally quits, and tells his father, who simply informs him that it's never a good idea to trade great working conditions for more money. Humbled, Chris returns to Doc's, who told Chris that the reason he was not paid minimum wage is that Chris would get less than minimum wage after taxes and Doc could not afford the paperwork. Chris is given back his job -- as James has moved on to work for the Chinese restaurant. (And Chris learns, to his dismay, that James is being paid in cash!)

(* * *)

The more "Everybody Hates Chris" deals with real situations and the less it deals in general sitcom wackiness, the stronger it becomes. Chris at the Chinese restaurant introduced much-needed realism to the episode, and I felt sympathy for Chris's plight -- he never expected his new job to be so bad.

However, Rochelle's hair mania dragged the episode down. The sample do's shown (one was shaped like a helicopter, complete with spinning blades) were so ludicrous that they could barely be suffered. Is Rochelle really that desperate to look like a fool? She has to keep a family of three kids and a husband together; would she be able to do that and maintain a stiffly lacquered hairstyle at the same time? Not likely.

Furthermore, the "cute teacher causes failing grades" trope is way overdone. (Julius was able to magically restore Drew's memory of historical events by covering Drew's teacher's face with a flag -- but when the flag was removed, Drew returned in milliseconds to idiot.) And of course, there was a "Greg Wuliger can't talk to the pretty girl" D-plot that was tacked on, simply so Chris could lament his lost conversations with Doc.

My wife not only figured out the twist in the plot right away ("he'll be paid by check and he'll earn less than he did at Doc's") but she said, "do you really want to invest any more time watching this show?" If future episodes are as weak as this one, "Everyone Hates Chris" will live up to its name.

"Everybody Hates Houseguests (Everybody Hates Chris)", 11-12-2007

In fiction, there's a concept called "suspension of disbelief". In order to enjoy the final product, an unwritten covenant exists between the creator and the consumer. The creator will be allowed to suspend the rules of reality within a restricted scope.

Take science fiction. Viewers watching "Spider-Man" will temporarily ignore the fact that a one-hundred fifty pound man can't swing through Manhattan on a thread, and viewers of "Star Wars" will ignore the absence of interstellar travel options at Delta Airlines. Every genre of fiction has these conventions. Soap operas expect betrayal and drama to happen at a rate thousands of times more frequently than expected in real life. Harlequin Romances expect smart, clever women to meet guys with pecs like Fabio.

Trangressions of this covenant, however, are punished severely. No, George Lucas, a bunch of walking teddy bears should not be able to defeat the massive intergalactic war machine. Aliens should not be speaking with Rastafarian accents. Seventy-year old men cannot mack on twenty-year old models -- I'm talking to you, Mr. W. Allen. The consumer says, "I'll accept this much of a violation of reality for you to tell a good story, but I expect restraint -- no more violations beyond what is absolutely necessary."

Even comedies have their various covenants. There are wacky comedies like the Austin Powers series, less wacky comedies like
Wedding Crashers and even less wackier comedy-dramas like Little Miss Sunshine. Since these covenants are never explicitly stated, the deal is usually sealed by watching the first few episodes of a serial comedy (or the trailer of a movie) -- "if you agree with these premises, we have a deal".

The premises of "Everybody Hates Chris" are fairly straightforward -- we thought. "Everybody Hates Chris" is sort of a coming-of-age comedy. The main character, Chris, suffers both through school (as the lone black kid in an all-white school) and at home, with his sometimes annoying family. There's a certain level of wackiness that is accepted -- the fact that Chris's teacher casually makes the most racist of statements, that Chris's mother Rochelle seems to be able to get jobs easily despite the fact that she must have quit hundreds of them by now, and that there is a suspicious lack of danger despite the fact that this is mid-80s Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Any real wackiness was limited to dream sequences which the narrator (Chris Rock) made clear were part of Chris's imagination. However..."Everybody Hates Houseguests" is a real rule-breaker of an episode.

The premise is that Chris's white friend Greg has his parents out of town for a week, and is not looking forward to staying at his grandparents. Chris makes the offer that Greg can stay at the family's Bed-Stuy apartment. Rochelle, Chris's mother, is initially against Greg staying, but gives in. When Greg arrives the first night, there is a banner welcoming him and Rochelle temporarily transforms into June Cleaver.

As Rochelle believes that guests must be given priority, the family's menu is (temporarily) changed to vegetarian and Greg has priority over television watching, with "Nova" substituted for "MacGuyver". However, Chris must bear the brunt of the annoyances as Greg shares a room with him.

Not only does Greg snore -- not only does Greg have a tendency to flail about in bed as he reimagines "Flashdance" in his sleep, but he has a further problem. It seems that as a habit carried over from childhood of fighting off monsters, Greg dresses like superheroes before going to bed to frighten the monsters away. Chris has to wake up Greg one morning -- with Greg dressed in the full regalia of Darth Vader, the mighty Sith Lord.

Yes, I was rolling my eyes. Eccentricity I can take; lunacy is another thing altogether. The "B" plot isn't much better. Chris's father, always on the lookout for another job, takes a part-time job as a taxi driver. While on the prowl for customers, a customer asks Julius to drive him to Las Vegas. Julius says no, of course, until he is offered $1000 to make the trip. Rochelle is fine with this, because hey, it's $1000!

However, the customer is actually a robber, holding up stores along the route with Julius completely unaware that his customer is the "taxi cab bandit" (we get to see this master criminal mentioned on a news cast, with authorities across the country on the alert). Julius obliviously makes it all the way to Las Vegas, where the police finally confront the two. There's some sort of subplot involving the customer's girlfriend, but by that time my attention had wondered completely away. You ever pick up a book and absent-mindedly flip through it when there's a show you've committed to watch? Well, guess what I was doing during this "B" plot.

We have to assume -- for comedic purposes -- that Julius has an IQ of 70. In sitcoms, a few brain-farts can be expected, where intelligent characters make commitments or say something clueless under a temporary mental haze. But the fact that Julius couldn't figure out what was going on beggars belief. Julius is the "strong-man" of the family; for Julius to be reduced to witless dupe is a major comedown.

Furthermore, Greg's massive weirdness would have had Chris's family calling social services. Yes, I know that everyone wants to rewrite "The Man Who Came to Dinner", and yes, we knew that Greg was weird -- but we not only didn't know that he was that weird, we also didn't know that anybody was permitted to be that weird in the "Everybody Loves Chris" universe. The creators of the show have suddenly changed the rules, and these sudden changes of the rules are usually the result of a writer's ineptitude -- "I'm going to change the rules of the universe to shoehorn in this awkwardly-written story."

Your first response might be, "hey, this is just a situation comedy, so have fun". Well, I never expected Fonzie in "Happy Days" to be able to spout wings. I never expected Mary Richards in "Mary Tyler Moore" to transform into a werewolf on moonlit nights. I'm sure you could have gotten a lot of funny episodes that way, but you would have changed the essence of what those comedies were about. There's a reason that "Jumping the Shark" because a catchphrase for the point that a series declines -- "Happy Days" at one time was a sitcom about a kid growing up in the 1950s; after a while it became a star vehicle for the "cool guy" to the point where more and more outrageous things had to be found for him to prove his cool. The shark-jump was the transgression; the show would no longer be what it once was, ever again.

My wife said, "They've finally run out of ideas," when she saw this episode. Yes, sweetheart, they did, at least for this week. I hope that Greg in a Darth Vader mask isn't the shark-jumping moment of "Everybody Hates Chris".

"Everybody Hates Driving (Everybody Hates Chris)", 10-15-2007

This particular "Everybody Hates Chris" concerns the love of any teenage boy's life -- the car. In this case, Julius's car, as Chris isn't old enough to drive a car on his own.

Chris, who is still in junior high school (although a fifteen-year old ninth grader) has been asking to be allowed behind the wheel of his father's car. His father has put him off for a long time, but gives in and lets Chris drive the car across the street to park it. Julius is so impressed that he decides to let Chris move the car to the other side of street for him when necessary -- occasionally, cars have to be moved for street cleaning, as this is Brooklyn.

Chris's new car relocation duties begin the next day -- Chris will move the car across the street, then head off to school. Julius will remain home all day, asleep and completely dead to the world, as he works many jobs and Chris's mother, Rochelle, is obsessed with Julius getting enough sleep. Rochelle, meanwhile, is off to traffic court to dispute a speeding ticket, and brings younger brother Drew and younger sister Tonya with her.

Chris enjoys the admiration he seems to be getting as a product of the authority that comes from behind the wheel. However, neighborhood hoodlum Jerome spots Chris and gets in the car, offering to show him how to "ride low" -- with his collars turned up and slinking all the way to the bottom of the car.

The ride takes a long time, and Chris ends up "about fifty blocks" from where he started. Jerome suggests that since he's already disobeyed his father by moving the car away from the street, he might as well go whole hog and drive the car to school, else Chris would be late anyway. Chris agrees with the "in for a penny, in for a pound" principle and drives his father's car to school.

At school, he wins everyone's admiration -- the admiration of his friend, Greg, as well as that of school bully Caruso. More importantly, he wins the attention of several attractive young girls at the school.

Meanwhile, in traffic court, Rochelle has to sit and wait her turn. She immediately beings complaining about the slow speed of the court, and can be overheard by the judge in charge of traffic court. She is reprimanded and told to sit down. Her kids begin complaining of hunger, and Rochelle offers them potato chips -- and the crunching of chips gets the attention of the judge again. Rochelle concludes this will be a loooooong day in court.

(* * *)

After school, Chris allows several of the young ladies to "ride" in his car (it's actually just them sitting in park, and listening to the radio). However, when it comes time to leave, the car won't budge. Panic sets in. Greg remembers that the school's janitor has been known to do favors for students -- for five dollars a pop.

The janitor knows Chris -- "I know you! You're the black kid!" -- and five dollars later, the janitor has got the car running again. Unfortunately for Chris, the total fee is $10 -- $5 for car repair, and another $5 to keep his mouth shut.

(* * *)

Back at traffic court, the kids are off to look for vending machines (Drew) or go to the bathroom (Tonya). After Drew gets paid $10 for his (presumably drug-free) urine and Tonya is rescued from a polite drug-runner in the women's bathroom, Rochelle's case finally comes up.

Rochelle, having watched all of the pleadings before hers, repeats variations of a theme to an unimpressed judge. However, Rochelle remembers that the testifying officer has always testified that each case was seven miles per hour over the speed limit. Rochelle rightly questions this dubious claim and the judge asks if the officer has the calibration proof for his radar gun. He does not.

Case dismissed! Rochelle does an in-your-face end-zone type celebration. Rochelle, through pure brainpower, has evaded a $50 fine for a parking ticket -- and earned an $80 fine for contempt of court. Well, "it takes money to make money", one supposes.

(* * *)

The family returns home. Rochelle bemoans her fate at traffic court. And yes, the car has now been moved over to the other side of the street, just like Julius asked. Chris is tempted to confess all to his father -- then, rationality and self-preservation kick in. Remember: if you're a teen, if you do something wrong, and if you get away with it, you don't give away the game!! (It's called the 11th Commandment: "Don't get caught.")

And for once in his life, things have gone Chris's way. He managed to take the car to school, earn the admiration of all, not get in an accident, not get caught by the police, and no one is the wiser. There's just one detail that Chris forgot about....

(* * *)

I definitely have to give some credit to the writers for avoiding the kind of tropes one sees on a comedy like "Saved by the Bell".

For example:

-if a kid smokes marijuana, the salesman will try to introduce him to harder drugs
-if a kid drives drunk, there will be a car crash
-if a kid wears slutty clothes, someone one will aggressively come on to her

...and so forth. Most of those tropes are just veiled reinforcements of messages that the society as a whole is interested in conveying. They're not offensive, except to people of intelligence -- there have been many cases of people doing all of the above and getting away with it. The idea that one would never get away with it makes for lazy writing, which is why "Saved by the Bell" is so reviled.

And Chris actually gets away with it. (Almost.) He drives the car, but doesn't have an accident. He makes it to school, but no one reports it to his parents. The Brooklyn cop he drives past doesn't pull him over. The fact is, kids get away with this stuff all the time, they don't learn any lessons (in the 23rd minute of a 24-minute sitcom, a time called the "moment of shit" by some writers), or if they do, those lessons depend on the moment. Chris was just happy to get back unscathed.

There are a few complaints though. Assuming that Chris doesn't have much experience in driving, I'm surprised he didn't have an accident. I've driven in New York city. Manhattan is terrifying, and Brooklyn and Queens, though not as peril-inducing, are certainly not much easier with their narrow streets and with Chris behind the wheel of one of the war-wagons of the 1970s. I find it hard to believe he didn't have an accident, because I would have at fifteen.

Secondly: Where did Chris get $10? I got an allowance in the early 80s, and it was nowhere near $10. Maybe the cost of living in New York is that expensive. Can anyone who was alive in New York at the time and getting an allowance help me out here?

Finally, it seems that Rochelle's character tends to rock back and forth between extremes -- towards simmering, barely-checked resentment to wild-black-woman-on-the-loose. It seems to switch into wild-woman a bit during her traffic scenes, but it could just be the presence of the kids driving her crazy. I just would like the writers to pick a consistent characterization, and have her stick with it. They're doing well everywhere else, is a little attention to Rochelle too much to ask?

"Everybody Hates Caruso (Everybody Hates Chris)", 10-8-2007

"Everybody Hates Chris" is one of the most successful comedies out there, in terms of critical acclaim. The show is supposed to be a fictional retelling of the life of comedian Chris Rock. It won an NAACP award for "Outstanding Comedy Series" according to its Wikipedia article, so I guess watching it adds to your multicultural credibility.

However, I'm not much of a fan of "Everybody Hates Chris". Oh, I can watch it when Ruth turns it on and get some enjoyment out of it, but all in all, I'd be just as happy playing computerized baseball. I can explain my problems with the show using the newest episode as an example.

In this episode, Chris and his friend, Greg Wulliger, happen to come across a fight in an alley. The school bully of Buddy Cianci Junior High, a red-headed punk named Caruso, is getting his ass handed to him by some Asian kid. Caruso is pretty much thumped and has to come to school for a few days wearing sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Chris finds out that the Asian kid is a new student at Buddy Cianci, and as a consequence, Caruso has stopped his bullying ways -- he is no longer even a token figure of menace. Through the entire series, Caruso has picked on Chris, beaten him up, and taken his lunch money, so to Chris this turn of consequences is a breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon doesn't last long as Chris finds himself set upon by even larger and deadlier school predators. Chris (through the voiceover by Chris Rock) states that Caruso was sort of the Godfather of bullies, the man at the top of the totem pole of fear. With his sudden retirement, several Caruso wanna-bes realize that the seat of honor is theirs for the taking. A sort of "white gang war" (Chris is the only black kid in school) breaks out and most of these hoodlums pick on Chris, because, hey, he's black and they're white.

For his own safety, Chris realizes that he has to return Caruso back to his seat. Better the bully you know than the bully you don't. Caruso, however, wants nothing to do with his old ways; the beating has really rattled him. Chris tries to pick on Caruso to jostle Caruso's need to terrorize, but Caruso turns over his lunch money passively -- he just wants to be left alone.

Therefore, Chris figures that the only way his peace -- and safety -- can be restored is to arrange a rematch between Chris and the new kid, one Caruso can win. Do I really need to go on any further beyond this point?

The "B-Plot" regards Chris's workaholic father, Julius. Julius has five days of vacation, but since he works 70 hours a week and gets paid for 40 during vacation, Julius figures he's losing money on the deal. His goal: to sneak out of the house while his wife, Rochelle, is working one of her inevitably-to-only-last-two-weeks-jobs. ("I don't have to put up with this! My man has two jobs!") But can he escape the perils of forced relaxation and work without anyone being the wiser?

I suppose my problem with all of this is that it's not as nearly as clever as it could be: this could be just any other sitcom out there. The entire "reset button" at the end leaves a particularly odious taste in my mouth. (What, you thought that Caruso would undergo a change of heart?) Julius's wacky antics aren't that much divorced from one of Rob's schemes on the old "Dick Van Dyke Show".

I mean, think about it! Chris is a groundbreaking comedian, and you wouldn't expect a show with his name on it to be completely...pedestrian. At least, it can raise a chuckle or two. There are the typical sequences of imagination which take place only in Chris's (and the other characters' minds) -- didn't they do that on "Ally McBeal", though? There is the occasional quick-cut to old movie reel footage to set a mood. At least, Chris Rock's voiceovers are honestly funny and original, but they are few and far between.

(Also: since this show takes place in real time, nerdy Greg Wulliger seems to be about two inches taller than last year and he looks like he's twenty-five. Very disturbing.)

Upon further thought, from the way Chris Rock tells stories about his life in Brooklyn, it was a lot tougher than this show makes it out to be. Rock, as the lone black student in white schools, was verbally abused in ways that you probably couldn't show on a sitcom. (I'm surprised that he turned out reasonably well-adjusted.) I also find it hard to enjoy the antics of Julius and his search for the almighty dollar when I remember that Mr. Rock's father died relatively young. I wonder if it was all that struggling to keep his family in shoes and food that killed him.

Did Chris Rock want to keep one foot firmly planted in the traditional sitcom? There's a reason that people don't watch traditional sitcoms; you can smell their tropes a mile away. I suggest that "Everybody Hates Chris" is the Microsoft of sitcoms -- a sitcom with the ethos, "well, this is good enough for the viewers". I think the show should have set its sights a little higher. Only Chris Rock's voiceover's save the show; without them, we could just as well watch "Ally McBeal" or some really old episodes of "Dobie Gillis", which are at least as funny as anything on "Everybody Hates Chris".