Chris Rock

Chris is a Brooklyn teenager bused to a mostly white junior high across town, the oldest of three kids in a family stretching every dollar. He narrates his own life with weary good humor, just trying to survive school bullies, a strict dad, a sharp-tongued mom, and the general indignity of being thirteen and broke in the 1980s.

Tyler James Williams plays the put-upon straight man with terrific comic timing, absorbing one humiliation after another while somehow keeping his dignity intact. The show hands him constant misfortune, but Williams never plays for pity — his exasperated reactions and deadpan asides make Chris's bad luck the funniest thing in the room.