I can turn down my cynicism a little during Christmas and enjoy some of the sappier things TV has to offer, but I like how that episode proved that Christmas doesn’t have to rely on magic and other nonsense, it can just be about trying a little harder to show others how much they mean to you.

Best moments:

• When Chris’ dad gets a job as Santa, Chris the narrator reasons he can just tell citizens he’s from the South Pole. whether I had an Emmy lying around the house I’d give it to Lewis for his performance. Drew and Tawnya try to behave so they’ll get expensive gifts, Chris puts gifts on layaway for his family and Julius takes additional work to afford presents, including playing a black Santa at a white branch store named Goldsteins, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by narrator Chris Rock. I don’t know whether that was for plot convenience, or considering Chris’ family was more realistic about what the kids could and could not get for Christmas.

  Looking back by the episode, though, I liked that it kept things grounded in reality. I did concern about Santa, though, a fictional being I believed in slightly longer than most

  kids.

  The “Kris” in that episode refers to another patient in Chris’ hospital room, played by Richard Lewis. Eschewing his usual “neurotic Jew” shtick, Lewis drew a lot of emotion from his brief moment on screen, and his run about all the society who are worse off than Chris (including a lady attacked by beavers and a man with no legs who gets a pogo stick instead of crutches) was the funniest part of the episode.

• Julius/Santa telling the kids their presents are too expensive, and even telling a blind kid that surgery would be too expensive. What was interesting about that episode is that the “real” Santa is never referred to.
• Chris imagining things that can’t be put on layaway, conjuring up one scene in which a woman’s dying son is replaced with another they had on layaway.

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Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, Everybody Hates Chris, The CW

(S02E10) I was basically a good kid, so during the Christmas season I didn’t fret too much about upsetting my parents and not getting presents.

Original post by Adam Finley