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Chappelle’s Show is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedians Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show as well as starring in the majority of its sketches. Chappelle, Brennan and Michele Armour were the show’s executive producers. The series premiered on January 22, 2003, on the American cable television network Comedy Central. The show ran for two complete seasons and a third, truncated season (dubbed “The Lost Episodes”).
After numerous delays, production of the third season of the show was abruptly ended when Chappelle left the show.
TV Guide ranked it #31 on their list of “TV’s Top 100 Shows” and also placed at #26 on Entertainment Weekly‘s “New TV Classics” list.
Rather than acting out sketches in front of a live studio audience, the sketches were prerecorded with the audience reaction usually used in lieu of a laugh track. According to Neal Brennan in Season 2 DVD commentary, the production team never edits in pre-recorded laughs, with the exception of the “Dude’s Night Out” sketch due to the lack of reaction from the audience.
Notable Sketches
Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories – Charlie Murphy (who also wrote the sketches) retells his encounters with 1980s celebrities, the most popular being the Rick James story. The sketch features Murphy as himself and Chappelle as James, including incidents such as James slapping Murphy, interspersed with scenes of the present-day Rick James (portrayed by James himself), trying to cover up for his past behavior, saying, “Cocaine‘s a hell of a drug.” The sketch spawned one of the show’s popular catchphrases, “I’m Rick James, bitch!”, which Chappelle, as James, repeatedly declares. The sketch attained even greater public attention when, in 2005, a candidate for city council in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, also named Rick James but unrelated to the singer, had many of his “Vote Rick James” campaign signs defaced by writing “Vote Rick James bitch!” or stolen by fans of the sketch. The other “True Hollywood Story” depicted Murphy and his crew losing a pickup game of basketball against Prince. Both Rick James and Prince confirmed their stories were true. Rick James admitted the skit was based on fact in unreleased interview footage produced for the Chappelle’s Show episodes he was featured in. Prince later confirmed Murphy’s tale in an interview with MTV, saying simply: “The whupping is true”. Prince later used an image of Chappelle dressed as Prince as the cover of his single “Breakfast Can Wait“.
Racial Draft – A spoof of the NFL Draft which saw various celebrities such as Tiger Woods (Chappelle) and the Wu-Tang Clan (playing themselves) being “drafted” into various “races” such as white, black, Jewish, Hispanic, and Asian, based on their perceived ethnicity or cultural leanings. Chappelle also played the white representative while rapper Mos Def played the black representative.
WacArnold’s – Chappelle gets a job as a young man at a fast food restaurant that portrays itself as providing a community service by offering jobs to disenfranchised, poor youth. A scene-by-scene mock of a 1990 McDonald’s commercial is followed by Chappelle slowly realizing the job is embarrassing and he doesn’t make enough money to support his family. He gets robbed and harassed on his way to work. During one encounter, a thug (played by Donnell Rawlings) quips, “Hey Calvin! It’s a fine line between fries and shakes!” before he breaks into song, “The leanest burger in the world, could be the meanest burger in the world, if you cook it that way!”. He follows by stating he has to “stop smoking this shit here” as his friends break out in laughter. The song is a remake of a 1971 song by The Persuaders (also covered by The Pretenders in 1983) “It’s a Thin Line Between Love and Hate”.
Wayne Brady’s Show – After Dave Chappelle quits the show in an opening segment that coincidentally mirrored the contract negotiations for the aborted third season,Wayne Brady (portraying himself) takes over as host and is asked to emcee the remaining episodes of the series since Chappelle had already filmed the remaining sketches. Regretting the decision to leave the show, Chappelle returns and confronts Brady. The ensuing confrontation leads to the airing of a flashback to a night of misadventures involving the two that portrays Brady (contrary to his friendly public image) as a murderous, pimping and seriously disturbed psychopath in the mold of Denzel Washington‘s character Alonzo Harris from the film Training Day.
When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong – A documentary style sketch which serves as a cautionary tale about when not to “keep it real” (be completely honest). The sketch depicts events in which a character is just minding their business until someone else says or does something that the first character doesn’t like. The character is given a choice: ignore the alleged provocation, or “keep it real” (get confrontational and be antagonistic with whoever provoked them), with the character going with the latter, all the while boasting about how they “keep it real”. Eventually the character’s decision backfires severely on them, thus ruining their life, while the person who provoked them is having the time of their life, and the character’s friends shunning the character’s choice to “keep it real”.
Player Hater’s Ball – Guest starring Ice T, the sketch featured Chappelle and several other regulars attending a convention of “haters”, i.e. people who make hurtful and deprecating comments towards others. The characters all dressed and acted in the manner of flamboyant 1970s pimps. The convention featured an award for “hater of the year” and an ad libbed segment where the attendees were shown pictures of celebrities such as Rosie O’Donnell and Kelly Osbourne and delivered put downs.
Read why Dave left in his interview with Oprah here.