Lee Siegel

The most original and brilliant show on television.

"Everybody Hates Chris" is something more than the wise, tender, funny portrayal of the evolution of a gifted mind. It's actually something very rare on television, even rarer in the movies, and almost non-existent in contemporary fiction. It's the wise, tender, funny portrait of a poor kid.

I can't think of another recent work of art, popular or serious, that's as caustic about race as this wild little cartoon.

The show moves swiftly and suspensefully.

Cloying [and] lackluster.

What you get is a show constricted by radical artistic compromises that it refuses to acknowledge having made. The result is an expulsion of Mamet's distinctive vision into the margins of the series, in which it wanders around like a director who's been fired from a movie yet will not leave the set.

"Black. White." is not a provocative study in secret prejudice, followed by growth and awakening. It's a reinforcement of the stereotypes the show claims it wants to examine and expose.