CBS' 'The Neighborhood' moves into its 100th episode Monday
Some people stay in their neighborhoods for a long time ... and as the show's 100th episode affirms, that's also true of those in television's “The Neighborhood.”
Directed by star and executive producer Cedric the Entertainer, the CBS sitcom's milestone story airs Monday, April 10, as the series nears the end of its fifth season. While Calvin (Cedric) tries to find the perfect birthday gift for wife Tina (Tichina Arnold) - which he has failed miserably at doing in the past - neighbor Gemma (Beth Behrs) tries to get Jerry O'Connell (appearing as himself) to donate tickets to his CBS show “The Talk” for a fundraiser where she's the principal and his children are students.
Max Greenfield, Sheaun McKinney, Marcel Spears and Hank Greenspan also are regular cast members on “The Neighborhood,” which already has been renewed for a sixth season. The show has endured through multiple changes of executive producers (including series creator Jim Reynolds), and Cedric acknowledges that reaching 100 episodes is “very rare in the business of television these days, so we don't take it for granted.”
Though humor is the main suit of “The Neighborhood,” the show gets topical reasonably frequently. “In order to really get to the show that we were intending to do,” Cedric explains, “(we had to) show the contentious nature of what happens when people just assume somebody is different from you because of skin color, religion, background, whatever. We kind of live in a culture where, 'If somebody is different from me, I don't like them.'
“It takes you back to the early Norman Lear shows ... 'All in the Family,' 'The Jeffersons.' That was very intentional in the way we wanted to approach the show, especially me.”
However, Cedric notes that as the casting and the overall work process continued, that helped shaped what “The Neighborhood” has become: “We enjoyed each other. We laughed a lot. We got each other's sense of humor, and so it's harder to act that (tension) when you have this kind of natural connection.”
Co-star Behrs agrees, reflecting, “There is a certain camaraderie here and a certain amount of fun. There's never a day where I wake up and I'm bummed to go to work. No matter what's happening in my personal life, I come here and I laugh all day long with these people.”
The on-air result makes actor Greenfield wistful about the atmosphere the series promotes, since he notes, “I grew up in a neighborhood where we definitely knew our neighbors. You were able to walk around the town, and it felt like I had a lot more freedom back then. And now, I know none of my neighbors. And I care not to.”