I've already told you I'm problematic and you have to deal with it. Now I'm telling you Legends of Chamberlain Heights is probably the most problematic TV show since South Park and it is over the top funny. I do not care about the think pieces and the tweets, this show has sometimes been just the thing I needed to get through a long week.
The show follows the lives of Grover, Jamal and Milk. They all attend Michael Clark Duncan High School and they're bench warmers for the Black Holes basketball team. Some other important characters are Grover's brothers Malik and Montrel. Malik is a pro black, activist and drug dealing grade school student. Montrel had a chance to play college basketball and eventually go pro until he smoked weed one time, now he's an unemployed stoner who rarely leaves the couch. There's also Cindy who Grover is in love with, her dad is a parody of Al Sharpton similar to Willie D's on
I'm Goin Out Like A Soldier. She's Randy, who is obviously gay to everyone but her. Then there's Dontrell, a very large gay man who has done prison time and will sexually assault male characters on the regular and they don't do anything about it because he scares them.
The plot is episodic so you can really pick up any episode and watch it. Each of the episodes is loosely based on regular high school life, with an extreme twist. Maybe in one episode they'll be taking care of robotic babies for a home economics class. In another they may be trying to get drugs so they'll be the cool kids at the party. The show can also be pretty smart and provide some social commentary. For example, a Middle Eastern exchange student comes to the school and is run out of town for building explosives, that turned out to be fireworks. Yet, this is the one moment when all of the other racism town. Then they hated each other again as soon as the boogeyman was gone. In another episode the power goes out, but only in the black neighborhoods and the power company actively laughs at them for thinking they have any other choices for power.
The humor in the show isn't politically correct at all. Milk has a blow up doll of a black woman because he truly believes he's a black man in a white man's body. Which leads to some strange situations. There's plenty of racism in the show. There's also plenty of jokes aimed at fat people, gay people, trans people, librarians, politicians, teachers, mentally challenged, physically handicap and just about anyone else you can think of. It holds no punches and if you're really sensitive to these jokes, you're going to watch it and have a bad time.
The show is really funny, there's no other way to put it. Legends is like South Park if it took place in the slums of California with high school students instead. Sure, nobody has run into aliens yet, but Malik is a grade school kid with a Chinese satellite so we're probably going to get there at some point. You just need to make sure you watch before that.
You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet. You can also check out his playthrough of Sleeping Dogs.
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