All Rise...

Judge Victor Valdivia doesn't hate Chris. Therefore, not everybody hates Chris. QED.

The Charge

Narrated and inspired by Chris Rock.

Opening Statement

Everybody Hates Chris began in 2005 as a realistic but funny alternative to treacly family sitcoms, but by 2008 had become increasingly repetitive and cartoonish. By the time the show began its fourth season in 2008, ratings were down and the show had lost much of the acclaim and following it had originally earned. So it was no surprise that the show had introduced all sorts of changes and shakeups as it began its fourth season, or that the show was officially canceled before the season was over. What is surprising is that the changes made to shake the show up actually worked and, even though Chris had indeed run its course, it still had a little life left in it. This fourth and final season isn't quite in the same league as the classic first season, but it's a vast improvement over the lackluster third season, making it a decent conclusion to the series.

Facts of the Case

Here are the 22 episodes compiled on four discs:

Disc One
• "Everybody Hates Tattaglia"
Chris (Tyler James Williams) graduates from Corleone Junior High to Tattaglia High School, and his life changes in some ways, though not always for the better.

• "Everybody Hates Cake"
Chris agrees to help his classmate improve his grades, but doesn't quite get what he bargained for. Chris' mom Rochelle (Tichina Arnold, Martin) is forced to interact with her crass neighbor Peaches (Tisha Campbell-Martin, Martin).

• "Everybody Hates Homecoming"
Chris gets a date for the school's homecoming dance, but is forced to contend with his date's Huxtable-like family.

• "Everybody Hates the English Teacher"
Chris convinces his English teacher to show movies instead of assigning books, but that doesn't go over so well with Tattaglia's principal, Ms. Morello (Jacqueline Mazzarella).

• "Everybody Hates My Man"
Chris attempt to become popular by helping the school's star football player with his homework, but Chris's best friend Greg (Vincent Martella) warns him that he's making a mistake.

• "Everybody Hates Doc's"
Chris finds his after-school job increasingly intolerable after his boss Doc (Antonio Fargas, Starsky & Hutch) brings around his tantrum-throwing new girlfriend (Robin Givens, Head of the Class).

Disc Two
• "Everybody Hates Snitches"
Chris sneaks out of the house to go to the movies with his friends, but winds up witnessing a shooting.

• "Everybody Hates Big Bird"
Chris and Greg join in when everyone else at school teases the class nerd, a tall awkward girl nicknamed Big Bird, but regret it when they realize that she really likes Chris.

• "Everybody Hates James"
Chris is assigned to participate in his school's Big Brother program, but is assigned a tough kid from his neighborhood that he already doesn't like.

• "Everybody Hates New Year's Eve"
Chris attempts to attend the Times Square New Year's Eve Party, but is disappointed when his father Julius (Terry Crews, White Girls) is caught up in a traffic crisis.

• "Everybody Hates Mr. Levine"
Chris decides to befriend his neighborhood's last white resident, Mr. Levine (Steve Landesberg, Barney Miller), but discovers he may have gone too far.

• "Everybody Hates Varsity Jackets"
Chris joins the school wrestling team to earn a letterman's jacket, with unexpected results.

Disc Three
• "Everybody Hates Fake IDs"
Chris and Greg struggle to find fake IDs so they can sneak into an 18-and-older Fat Boys concert.

• "Everybody Hates PSATs"
Chris decides that he can cram for upcoming PSAT exam, but then is surprised to learn that Rochelle wants to use his score to get the family into an exclusive upper-crust society.

• "Everybody Hates Boxing"
Chris takes up boxing to defend himself from school bully Caruso (Travis T. Flory), and discovers that he's actually really good at it.

• "Everybody Hates Lasagna"
Chris is forced to hide a stash of weed for a neighborhood drug dealer, adding to his increasing struggle with his home-economics class.

• "Everybody Hates Spring Break"
Chris accidentally runs over Greg with someone else's car, and a hobbled Greg is forced to stay with Chris and Rochelle over spring break.

Disc Four
• "Everybody Hates the Car"
Chris is finally able to convince his parents to let him buy a car, but discovers that car ownership is more trouble than it's worth.

• "Everybody Hates Back Talk"
Chris is fed up with how lazy his brother Drew (Tequan Richmond) and his sister Tanya (Imani Hakim) are, and disobeys his mother to make her understand that.

• "Everybody Hates Tasha"
Chris finally convinces his neighbor Tasha (Paige Hurd) to be his girlfriend, but learns to regret it.

• "Everybody Hates Bomb Threats"
When Chris is punished by his teacher Mr. Thurman (Paul Ben-Victor, The Wire) by being forced to memorize a lengthy speech, he decides that maybe calling in a bomb threat to his school might be a good way to get out of his assignment.

• "Everybody Hates the GED"
When Mr. Thurman and Ms. Morello threaten to flunk Chris, he decides to take the GED test and be done with school once and for all.

The Evidence

When we last left Chris at the end of the third season, Chris had finally graduated from Corleone Junior High, but was confronted with the possibility that he and his best friend Greg would attend different schools. That was meant to be the cliffhanger, but a funny thing happens when this season begins: no one cares about the cliffhanger. Chris does indeed enter a different high school than Greg, but it's not at all a big deal. In fact, Chris is actually in better shape at Tattaglia (get it?) High than he was at Corleone. Here, he is no longer the only black student, he actually lands a good job as equipment manager of the football team, and girls are starting to notice him now. True, he's still the only black student that Caruso is interested in abusing, being equipment manager means getting ordered around by all the jocks, and the girls that notice him are the school nerds, but at least he isn't losing all the time now.

If Chris was in a bad place, Chris was doing even worse. By the end of the third season, the show had fallen into a painful rut. Episodes repeated the same tired formula, the characters had deteriorated into loud cartoons, and the dialogue went from realistic to hackneyed. Even the stellar performances by the cast, especially Arnold and Crews, weren't enough to make the show as good as it used to be. So for the fourth season, Chris changed setting and added new characters. Usually, that's the sign of death for a sitcom, but the changes actually benefited the show. Letting Chris win a few battles here and there actually opens up the show for more incisive comedy. Watching Chris struggle with how to be a good boyfriend, how to hang out with popular kids, and how to prepare for college is much funnier and truer than simply rehashing more storylines in which poor Chris loses over and over again. The new character of Mr. Thurman, who's Chris's homeroom teacher and also coach of the football team, is a welcome addition. Ben-Victor's performance is hilarious, perfectly capturing a public servant who has been soured by years of grinding abuse and disdain. Similarly, Arnold's former Martin castmate Tisha Campbell-Martin gets some great moments as loud ex-con Peaches. The season also means that Chris's two previous villains, vicious bully Caruso and well-meaning but hopelessly patronizing teacher Ms. Morello, are no longer as heavily overused as they were previously. Now they appear sporadically and are more amusing than when they were seen in every episode.

The performances are as great as ever. Arnold shows herself to be one of the funniest physical comics on TV—the scene where she attempts to try on a pair of jeans that isn't quite big enough is the most riotous visual jokes of the season. For his part, Crews gets some of his best moments in "Everybody Hates My Man," in a storyline where Julius develops a new appreciation of life but winds up annoying his family with his incessant sunniness. It's a welcome reminder that Crews is capable of far more subtle work than he's often given credit for. As for the kids, they've grown so much over the last few years that it's a bit disconcerting to see how little they resemble the cute moppets of previous seasons—at this point, Tyler James Williams is taller than Tichina Arnold. Still, given improved writing this season, they provide better performances than they have in the past.

Paramount has done a good job of releasing this season on DVD. The anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround mix are both stellar, with no major flaws to speak of. The set comes with a decent selection of extras. The first episode comes with a very good commentary by co-creator/executive producer Ali LeRoi, who has plenty to say about the episode. There are deleted scenes for selected episodes, but each one only lasts about 30 seconds or less, so they're mostly inconsequential. Each episode also comes with a "Director's Webisode," which is a two-minute featurette in which each episode's director discusses how the episode was shot. Disc Four comes with an amusing "Gag Reel" (5:19) and several featurettes. The best is "Candid with the Cast" (27:40), in which regular director Jerry Levine interviews the main cast members about their memories from the past four seasons. There are lots of great stories here and it's touching to see how affectionate the cast is in real life. "Death in the Dining Room" (6:00) briefly explores why the show's frequent dining room scenes were so difficult to shoot. "Give 'Em Props" (6:15) examines how the show tried to use period-appropriate props throughout its run, while "The Key to VFX" (4:33) describes the show's use of green-screen effects. These are both brief but informative. The one clunker here is "Juste Pour Rire = Just for Laughs" (7:27), a peculiar piece in which a scene from one episode is dubbed over with actors doing silly French accents. It's a weak joke that's dragged out to an interminable length and viewers should simply skip it.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

When Chris Rock announced before this season was over that he was pulling the plug on the show, it made sense; even with its rejuvenation, Chris was simply running out of steam and deserved a fitting conclusion. Unfortunately, the series finale is probably the worst episode here. It's a recreation of the series finale of The Sopranos, which doesn't work at all because a) Chris isn't a gangster and b) merely rehashing another series' finale without adding anything new to it isn't really funny. Rock and LeRoi should have come up with something more fitting that actually showed Chris and his family, for all their squabbles and mistakes, truly hanging together. Anyone who invested themselves in this show will find the finale completely disappointing.

Closing Statement

Apart from the misguided finale, this season of Everybody Hates Chris is actually one of the better ones. There are several laugh-out-loud moments here, which this show hasn't had for a while, and viewers who have been disappointed with the show's previous season will be pleased with this one. It's not up to the standards of the show's classic first season, which belongs on any list of classic family sitcoms, but it does provide a reasonable bookend.

The Verdict

Not guilty, but start with the first season before getting this one.

Give us your feedback!

Did we give Everybody Hates Chris: The Final Season a fair trial? yes / no

What's "fair"? Whether positive or negative, our reviews should be unbiased, informative, and critique the material on its own merits.

Share This Review

Follow DVD Verdict

Other Reviews You Might Enjoy

• Mo' Money
• The Blues Brothers
• Happily Divorced: Season One
• Webster: Season Two