Review: Everybody Still Hates Chris “Everybody Still Hates Breakdancing; Everybody Still Hates Jackie Robinson”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chris starts a club with Greg, and later tries dating a girl from Tasha’s church group.

OUR TAKE

Everybody Still Hates Chris continues to be JUST OKAY animated entertainment. Like that’s pretty much all to say at the end of the day and I wish I could just say that and call it a night. But no, we gotta get into a bit more specifics. Well, first thing is that the first of the episodes this week mostly focuses on Chris starting a club with his white friend Greg, but the two clearly have different perspectives about what the club should be for, so this leads to some tension and conflict in their friendship. I hadn’t really gotten much of an impression of Greg prior to this since he seemed just like the cowardly sidekick, but apparently he has a bit of a selfish streak which he has to grapple with a bit when his plans to use their makeshift Breakdancing Club clash clash with Chris’s. Chris just wants to have a semi-official school club for him to be alone for a bit, but Greg thinks it would be a good way to attract girls, and the two basically come to blows over it. Oh yeah, and Chris’s dad goes through training to be able to discern women’s butts so he can more properly appreciate his wife. Felt like that was important to mention.

The other episode is partly about Drew apparently having some vague misremembered connection to iconic baseball player Jackie Robinson, but the important thing is also related to Chris. Specifically, it’s how Tasha seems to have been pretty much freed from being Chris’s love interest and being allowed to simply exist as herself, which I think is pretty neat. In the Breakdancing episode, she exists as an odd parallel to Tonya, who wants dress older while her mom refuses, while Tasha is in the opposite situation. So, maybe we’ll see more Tasha in other situations as her own character. Though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Chris’s plot in this episode is about following up with that girl Tasha set him up with, whom he never learns the name of but still tries to keep a relationship with. Initially he plans to get her to break up with him when he starts to lose interest, but once he conveys that they simply don’t like the same things, she actually respects him for being honest about his feelings. But then he gets a bit too honest and admits he still doesn’t know her name, so…status quo restored I guess.