HBO’s ‘South Side’ Is A Comedic Reflection On The Razing Of Chicago’s Black Neighborhoods

Numerous TV shows have been set up in Chicago. Its big-shoulders reputation combined with the cultural panache which earns it the title of Capital of the Midwest makes it attractive to Hollywood writers. It’s not a show that does it right.

Absolutely not “Joanie Loves Chachi,” It may be a close call for “The Bob Newhart Show,” and let’s call it almost there for that recent critics’ darling, the au jus-spattered, frenetic, and heartfelt “The Bear.” Even that last one, though, doesn’t feel homegrown. Although the shots show this area, or the Sears Tower, it doesn’t feel like home. If it weren’t about an Italian beef joint, it could be anywhere. It can be clearly identified as being made by a suburbaniteNot a Chicagoan.

For this expat West-sider, it’s clear that HBO’s comedy “South Side,” is by South-siders, about South-siders, and for — well, anybody who likes a joint that’s hilarious, self-aware but not self-conscious, topical without being preachy, and as grounded in a real place as ever a show I’ve seen. Even better is the unstated undercurrent that the place’s potential was ground down under statist central planning decades ago and has yet to recover.

“South Side,” The Chicago Comedy Festival just wrapped its third season. It exemplifies how Chicago is all about hustle. It doesn’t matter if you’re a cop wearing braids, a lazy repo man, a guy selling sno-cones on the corner, or an alderman in suits just a little too shiny to be tasteful. It’s Chicago, and you do what you gotta do. You can’t expect anybody to help unless they get something back.

The two repo man main characters, the studiously unglamorous Simon James (Sultan Salahuddin) and Kareme Odom (Kareme Young), made their way through community college only to have to scrape by taking every piece of furniture from a family’s home. And when that family didn’t keep up on the payments to Kareme’s brother, Quincy (Quincy Young, his real-life twin), of course they’re going to get up to some nonsense like selling black-market Viagra just to get a little more ahead. And it’s damned funny when things don’t work out for them, like they never do.

“South Side” Bashir Salahuddin (who plays the sad Officer Goodnight) and Diallo Riddle, a Harvard theater friend, came up with the idea for the show. Salahuddin is a South Sider and his wife Chandra Russell plays the role of the unpredictable Sgt. Turner, who’d much rather be going to Lollapalooza than tracking down a killer; his brother, Sultan, is our sorta-hero, Simon; and their sister, Zuri, plays another, probably smarter, employee at the Rent-T-Own store.

When Sultan Salahuddin’s official Comedy Central bio notes that he spent his childhood “buying Now and Laters from the candy lady,” you believe it. Didn’t we all do the same? The sno cone man said, “We finna make this happen,” This is how you get people talking about the syrups.

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