'CHOCOLATE' REIGN
DAVID ALAN GRIER MAKES NEWS SHAMELESSLY FUNNY
by Linda Stasi
Grier's satirical news show starts tonight on Comedy Central.
Rating: 3.5 / 4 stars
Last updated: 12:16 pm
October 15, 2008
Posted: 3:17 am
October 15, 2008
IF you've never gotten over the cancellation of "In Living Color" or the abrupt departure of Dave Chappelle and "Chappelle's Show," have I got a show for you.
Tonight, Comedy Central premieres the hilarious laugh-out-loud "news" show "Chocolate News," which seals the void left by those shows and fills the, er, black hole in satirical pop-culture/ news shows.
Created, produced and starring David Alan Grier, "Chocolate News" is funny like Chappelle, edgy like "In Living Color" and smart like "The Daily Show," but without the smugness. It also dares to go where no PC show would dare to go
Grier is DAG - officious magazine news show host with a black-bias slant who has several news "correspondents" working for the show doing fake interviews with fake people in the news.
The show opens with DAG in a screed about the death of hip hop. "Ice Cube went from 'Kill at Will,' to 'Are We There Yet?' " he cries. Then there's a devastatingly spot-on, laugh-'til-it-hurts sketch with Grier as Maya Angelou giving us a preview of the poem she would read at Obama's inaugural. See, I just thought I was an ignorant slug (shut up!) when I heard her read her poem to Bill Clinton on his inaugural. I thought it sounded like something you'd knock off in college. Grier is so crazy-funny here that I was practically crying.
Then there's "The N-Word Task Force," a biracial commission set up to figure out what words blacks could call whites that would be as offensive; there's Grier as Phat Man, a blinged-out rapper who does a filthy PSA for "No Child Left Behind," featuring women's gyrating behinds; a memorial for the show's token white reporter, Roger Dunn, with clips of Dunn getting beat up around the country; and a tirade by DAG about how not-black-enough Obama is. "He barely passes the brown bag test!" he screams. But he tells white people who might be afraid to vote for a black man to "just vote for the white half" of him.
As for the Republican ticket, DAG warns: "They got an ex-prisoner whose running mate is a heat-packing mama of five with a knocked-up teenage baby mama! White folks, have you lost your minds?"
Next week is just as funny, with Grier as black super sports agent Thelonius Brown (whose company's acronym is ROIDS), who scouts Little League teams for "baseball's vanishing blacks." Yale grad, Shakespearian-trained Grier hasn't been this funny since "In Living Color." And I haven't laughed this much since Chappelle disappeared.
"Chocolate News"
Tonight at 10:30 on Comedy Central
