Everybody Hates Chris' Sequel Series Deserved Better
If the sequel to "Everybody Hates Chris" had taken the standard revival approach of shows like "Malcolm in the Middle," it would've reintroduced Chris (Tyler James Williams) as an adult, aging the character up with his actor. Instead, the series switched its format into animation. "I wanted to trap Chris in this period of time where he's still a Black Charlie Brown, before his road to fame begins," the new show's creator Sanjay Shah told IndieWire. "Everybody Hates Chris" has been praised as a great coming-of-age series, and Shah's approach allowed it to stay in that genre.
Shah said animation also made it easier to ramp up the original series' zany humor: "Even if it's just all of a sudden the backdrop goes away and it's a color card expressing emotion, we can do things in animation that we couldn't otherwise."
Despite Shah's unique spin on the revival format, it's not clear if "Everybody Still Hates Chris" will ever make it to a second season. Paramount has not made any announcements about the show in the past year, and the final 10 episodes of the show's 20-episode production order have never been released on any American streaming service as of this writing.
The sequel series was oddly handled by Paramount
The viewership numbers for "Everybody Still Hates Chris" during its first season were fairly low. While the critics who reviewed the new show generally liked it, relatively few publications reviewed it at all. The sequel series was released on Comedy Central to a significantly more crowded TV landscape than the original, and Paramount waited more than six months after its initial airing to release the show on Paramount+.
This wouldn't be the first time the franchise had faced network complications, however. "Everybody Hates Chris" aired its first season on UPN before the network shut down in 2006. When the show moved to the CW for its second season it reportedly lost nearly a million weekly viewers.
Chris Rock noted in a 2017 interview that while the original show had never been a huge ratings hit, its popularity benefited from reruns. "Everybody Still Hates Chris," with its 10 episodes siloed away on Paramount+, appears highly unlikely to get a similar benefit from syndication status.