TVSquad

(S02E06) This episode marked the first appearance of Jason Alexander as the new school principal, a man who took some time off after assaulting a faculty member and has now re-invented himself as a kind of enigmatic guru of sorts.

Alexander's character only appears in the first part of the episode, but by the end we learn he was with Chris and Joey the whole time, at least, he had somebody watching after them when they become lost in New York City. It turns out his plan to make Chris and his bully understand one another didn't quite have the affect he had hoped, though.

The meat of this episode had to do with Chris being paired up with Joey, the chunky, racist white kid who torments him at school every day. I admire how they didn't take the easy way out and have the two become friends in the end, though I would say Joey left with a better understanding of who Chris really was, even if it wasn't enough to make him stop beating him up.

I tend to praise this show a lot, but just to show I'm not so enamored with it I believe it could do no wrong, I'll point out a few things I didn't like. First of all, I thought the B story about Tonya stealing her mother's earrings was rather weak, like something you would have seen on Full House. Also, when Chris calls home to tell his family he's lost, he has to call collect, but his father hangs up as soon as he hears the operator. The gag is that his father is such a penny pincher he refuses to accept the charges, but who would hang up on a collect call? Especially someone with children?

That being said, the episode also had plenty of great moments. I loved when Joey insisted he wasn't racist by telling the principal he liked Michael Jordon and found Gary Coleman hilarious. I also loved the cutaway scene of the family wearing tap shoes to a funeral and doing a shuffle into the church. And while I hate to admit it, I laughed really hard when Joey called Chris "Bubbles," an extremely racist allusion to Michael Jackson's pet chimp. My quick burst of laughter was followed by a mild guilt pang, which I suppose isn't a terribly inappropriate response.