Review: 'Chad' is Fresh and Family-Friendly

Adolescence has a lot of tragedy in it, and so it is a ripe mine for comedy.

Nasim Pedrad stars as a young Persian-American teenager, "Chad," in a comedy of that title on TBS that finds her playing much, much younger than she is - and also, well, male.

She's not breaking new ground in seriously acting as the opposite gender; a more recent example would be Sean Hayes, who starred in the movie "Lazy Susan'' last year.

What is more astounding is that "Chad" feels like a pretty fresh, and mostly family friendly, comedy since it has main characters who are Arab Americans without including standard American anti-Arab stereotypes.

Chad is spoiled, anxious, flighty, needy, not yet independent. He is the opposite of a sexy model minority teen. He doesn't possess a six-pack or perfect hair. He's not relatable even in the most difficult of circumstances, and he is definitely not cool. He possesses an almost inhuman talent for being able to be the weirdest person in the room, even when hanging out with a group of self-described losers and social castoffs. He rejects nearly everything unique about himself and his family in order to appeal to people who really aren't interested in him as a person. In a room with just one other strange child, he will still be the person who seems weirder in contrast.

In his defense, he is a fourteen-year-old. I was interested in "Chad" because I was curious about watching Nasim Pedrad in this role. Chad seems like the very opposite of her in almost every way. I found new things to delight in from moment to moment, from the adult cast to the high school cast. I even really enjoyed Chad's outfits.

To be fair to Nasim Pedrad, who also worked behind the scenes as the creator, writer, executive producer, and showrunner, some of the greatest moments in the show are literally her being Chad, thoroughly at the moment, just running around, convinced that he is the coolest person ever.

Given that April is Arab American heritage month, it is nice to see a show explicitly about Arab Americans that stays specific, in part because Pedrad herself is Iranian. As someone who is not Arab American, I can't speak to everything that is right about "Chad" in this regard, but it doesn't feel like a million focus groups decided on joke topics.

One especially meaningful running joke in the show thus far is how Chad's awkward, antisocial behavior - despite coming from a person of color - is still anti-Black in some way. That is, the Black folks and colored folks around him know why he says and does certain things which are anti-Black, but he hasn't figured it out yet.

"Chad" premiered this week on TBS.