‘Everybody Still Hates Chris’ Is Hard to Love

The latter days of UPN, before it merged with The WB to become The CW, weren’t marked by many critical hits, but Everybody Hates Chris was one of them. The titular Chris was Chris Rock, who narrated the single-camera comedy about his life, starting when he turned 13, moved with his parents from New York housing projects to the Brooklyn neighborhood Bed-Stuy, and started attending a better school, far away in an all-white neighborhood. The show wasn’t coy about its influences: its title was a play on that of another long-running sitcom with a standup comic at its center, and the device of a sitcom narrator commenting on scenes of his childhood from later in life had been done decades earlier on The Wonder Years. When the time came for Everybody Hates Chris to end its run, it stole from the best, with a final scene directly inspired by the series finale of The Sopranos. 

Up to that point, the series finale has revolved around Chris (Tyler James Williams) finding out he’s broken an arbitrary rule at his school — any student who’s late 30 times or more will be held back, and Chris has been because he takes multiple forms of unreliable public transit to get there. Chris decides to drop out and get his G.E.D. rather than repeat the 10th grade at a school where the teachers harass him; when the entire family has gathered for dinner at a neighborhood diner, Chris’ father Julius (Terry Crews) enters with an envelope containing Chris’ test results. “What’s it say?” Chris asks, before the screen abruptly cuts to black, as in the scene to which Chris is paying tribute. 

It took Sopranos creator David Chase a decade and a half to confirm that, as far as he’s concerned, his blackout indicated the murder of his protagonist, Tony (James Gandolfini). Chris fans didn’t have to wait for their own answer: Rock’s having left school in the 10th grade to get his G.E.D. had been part of his public biography for years before Chris premiered. But anyone who’s spent the years since that finale wondering about Chris’s cliffhanger still doesn’t have to Google it: a new animated sequel answers that question, and continues telling Chris’ story, though not compellingly enough to withstand comparison to the show that spawned it.

Everybody Still Hates Chris picks up exactly where its progenitor left off, transitioning from live action to animation just as the family finds out the results of Chris’ G.E.D. exam. I’m not supposed to spoil anything at all, but I think it’s safe for me to say that this isn’t a show about Chris (now voiced as a kid by Tim Johnson Jr.) starting a new phase of his life as a full-time employee of Red Lobster. 

Unsurprisingly, the parts of Everybody Still Hates Chris that work best are the ones that proceed from what we already know about the characters from the original show. Julius (Crews again) still tries to save money everywhere he can, still believes there isn’t a problem he can’t solve without getting an additional job and still derives a great deal of pride from his role as a provider to his family and possibly the neighborhood’s only decent family man. The second episode is set largely at a block party, where it’s a big deal for Julius to share some of his duties with Chris. Meanwhile, Chris’ mother Rochelle (Tichina Arnold, also returning from the original series) falls into petty bickering with another neighborhood mom she doesn’t think is on her level. Their clash helps Rochelle reach an epiphany about her own personal history that’s unexpectedly touching from a character who’s mostly portrayed as the family’s violent enforcer. Nothing this show has them do in the first two episodes would be out of place for their live-action characters, and the continuity of having the same actors return to voice them is one of the sequel’s greatest strengths.

But I still spent most of my time watching the two episodes that will premiere on Comedy Central Wednesday wondering why the show was made at all. No disrespect to the coming-of-age story — it’s a beloved theme for a reason — but reviving a show that was only ever a moderate hit in its day, and changing format to do so, feels like something that could only happen when a company wants to get into business with the very famous and powerful comic who created it. Presumably, a major part of Everybody Hates Chris’ appeal was bringing new dimensionality to Chris Rock by taking us back to his childhood. But — again, without spoiling anything — the sequel diverges from his real life such that we essentially end up in the dullest possible version of a parallel universe. Continuing to use Rock’s name and narration for a more heavily fictionalized installment of the Hates Chris franchise feels cynical when all these people could be using their talents to tell an entirely new story. 

If what you want is Everybody Hates Chris, just watch it. If what you want is Chris Rock, he’s made several stand-up comedy specials where he talks in great detail about his life. If what you want is a coming-of-age story set in the Brooklyn of yesteryear, watch Spike Lee’s Crooklyn. If what you want is a coming-of-age story about a Black kid who isn’t Chris Rock, watch 2021’s sequel to The Wonder Years. If what you want is a coming-of-age story about a boy finding his voice as an artist, and that came out in 2024, watch Dìdi. 

You can watch Everybody Still Hates Chris, of course. You just don’t have to.