Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Neighborhood’ On CBS, Where A White Family Moves Into A Black Neighborhood

CBS has long held onto the notion that the classic multi-camera sitcom format works, especially when the right people are in the cast and behind the camera. But they’ve also had some issues lately sustaining any multi-cam that wasn’t created by Chuck Lorre. Will The Neighborhood help them break that streak?

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A family driving in their car in their new neighborhood. The dad asks the kid how excited he is, but the kid is too busy spotting Black people.

The Gist: The Johnsons — Dave (Max Greenfield), Gemma (Beth Behrs) and Grover (Hank Greenspan) are moving to Los Angeles from Michigan for Gemma’s new job at a progressive charter school. Dave is excited to start their new chapter, but all Grover can tell him from his back seat is that Grandma hates that they’re so far away, and that the neighborhood isn’t safe.

We then get a look at the Butler family. Calvin Butler (Cedric The Entertainer) is setting up the smoker for the annual neighborhood block party, asking for no help from his grown son Malcolm (Sheaun McKinney), who lives at home and is currently not working. Malcolm sees the Johnsons move in next door, and knows his dad, whose family has been in the neighborhood for generations, will have a fit if he sees a White family next door, so he tells Calvin about the Johnsons without giving any details.

You see, Calvin doesn’t like White people. He thinks that they’re pretty much all racists, especially the ones that try extra hard to get along, using the example of White people who find Rihanna very attractive. So when Calvin and his wife Tina (Tichina Arnold) go next door and find out that the Johnsons are White, Malcolm laughs and takes video of his dad’s reaction.

Tina invites the Johnsons next door to the party, but Dave doesn’t want to go, especially after meeting Calvin and Tina’s younger son, Marty (Marcel Spears), who expressly tells them that his dad doesn’t like White people. But Gemma insists, and Dave finds out that, while he is trying too hard and that there will be a period of adjustment, most of the neighborhood is fine with them there… except for Calvin, of course.

Our Take: Shows like The Neighborhood make us grumpy. When you look at how much talent there is on the screen — Cedric and Arnold, Behrs and Greenfield, Spears and McKinney — it’s so disappointing to see them saddled with two-dimensional characters and gag-heavy dialogue.

There’s potential in The Neighborhood, especially after Greenfield and Behrs replaced the original two actors who played the Johnsons after the pilot was picked up. It made the show 10% less annoying than the promos and the original trailer made it out to be, mainly because Greenfield plays Dave as super-nice and ingratiating but with a bit of an edge. And Behrs brings some toughness to Gemma which made her determination to get to know the Butlers despite Calvin’s cold reception believable. Arnold, Spears and McKinney play characters that are open to getting to know their new neighbors, despite their skepticism and knowledge that the Johnsons automatically get more advantages than they do simply because they’re White.

But something about Cedric’s “Black Archie Bunker” character feels out of place and hopelessly retrograde in a 2018 sitcom. We know what creator Jim Reynolds (9JKL, The Big Bang Theory) was getting at when creating Calvin Butler, that bigoted people come in all colors. But the way Cedric plays it is about as nuanced as an Eddie Murphy routine from 1982, reducing White people to a nerdy voice and the phrase “but I have a lot of Black friends.” There is a chance to make Calvin’s distrust of White people more subtle, but if the show is too busy having Calvin make cheap jokes like how their neighbor’s son is named “Grover Johnson,” we’ll never get there.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Dave and Malcolm have a sincere talk that evening; Dave regrets trying so hard during the party, and cornily tells Malcolm that the world would be a better place if everyone was as welcoming as this neighborhood is. Malcolm says it’s easier for someone like Dave to think that than it is for someone like him. He then tells Dave, “Welcome to the neighborhood,” then gets surprised by Calvin in the window, saying in his nerdy White voice, “I have a lot of Black friends!’

Sleeper Star: Spears is pretty funny as the wisecracking Marty, who is just amused by this whole situation.

Most Pilot-y Line: The Grover Johnson gag is pretty lame, and it’s mentioned more than once. But that’s not the only line that’s hammered to death in the pilot.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Despite the talent, we don’t think The Neighborhood is going to rise above its gag-heavy writing and find the funny in what could have been some interesting characters.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Neighborhood on CBS All Access