Review: In ‘The Chi,’ a Young Man Dies, and the Ripples Spread

Chicago, fairly or not, has been defined lately in terms of crime. Its murder rate has gotten press attention and become a political talking point. Even Dick Wolf, producer of “Law & Order,” decamped from Manhattan a few years ago for “Chicago P.D.”

It looks at first as if “The Chi,” which begins Sunday on Showtime, will define the city the same way. A street-corner murder in its first few minutes sets in motion the story — grief, revenge and counter-revenge — that will enfold a vast range of characters in an African American neighborhood.

But it’s how “The Chi” gets to that murder that hints at the vibrant, complex voice that, eventually, emerges in the drama’s first four episodes.

We start off riding through the city with Coogie (Jahking Guillory), a playful 16-year-old with a wild mane of hair, on a canary yellow bicycle with a banana seat. He coasts past colorful graffiti (“From Struggle Comes Strength”), watches kids doing flips on a discarded mattress, haggles with a convenience-store owner over the price of a soda and jerky.

Before Coogie comes on the dead body and, fatefully, takes the young man’s necklace, we see Chicago through his eyes. We’ve already seen in the news what the city is, at least on corners like this one. What it can be — the vibrant place of possibility that Coogie sees — gives “The Chi” its heart and its heartbreak.

“The Chi” was created by Lena Waithe, a Chicago native who won an Emmy last year for an episode of “Master of None” that she co-wrote, becoming the first black woman to win for comedy writing. (The executive producers include the rapper Common, also from Chicago; the showrunner is Elwood Reid, of the FX border drama “The Bridge.”) “The Chi” exudes hometown affection and tough love.

It’s a tricky balance. The danger of this kind of story is that it can define its characters as personifications of social ills, so that we know them as problems before we know them as people. The first episode runs that risk, leaning hard into the melodrama and underlining its moments of pathos heavily.

What emerges as “The Chi” gets room to breathe is that, while it unfolds from a crime, it’s not really a crime story. It’s about a widening pool of people who would rather be doing anything besides dealing with the repercussions of a murder.

Ronnie (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), the father figure to the dead young man, would rather be getting his life together. Brandon (Jason Mitchell), Coogie’s half brother, would rather be advancing his career as a cook in a trendy restaurant. Twelve-year-old Kevin (Alex Hibbert), an unwitting witness, would rather be working up the nerve to talk to his crush at school.

Instead, each of them is confronted by the expectation that to be a man means to take care of business violently. Mwine is especially remarkable as the precariously balanced Ronnie knocked off his axis by grief.

“The Chi” gradually builds its female characters as well, like Laverne (Sonja Sohn), Brandon’s mother, who bitterly feels that her son thinks he’s better than her, plating pork belly for hipsters and dating a woman who’s “bourgie as turkey bacon.”

Viewers may recognize Sohn from HBO’s “The Wire,” and while “The Chi” is a very different show, it shares some of that drama’s conversational sense of humor.

It’s also astute about how responsibility for others — parents, siblings, children — complicates lives. For instance, there’s Emmett (Jacob Latimore), a charming ladies’ man who learns that he has a toddler son, making him suddenly responsible for something besides his sneaker collection.

There is a police story, which moves slowly at the periphery and is so far not too distinctive. But in its best moments, “The Chi” offers a glimpse of the sort of stories these characters might live in if circumstance didn’t make them players in a murder case. A subplot about Kevin getting conscripted into a production of “The Wiz” is refreshing, and Shamon Brown Jr. is a delight as Kevin’s husky, confident friend Papa.

In these scenes, “The Chi” momentarily becomes a kind of South Side “Freaks and Geeks” — which is bittersweet, because these kids, like any, deserve to have a time in life when unrequited crushes and embarrassing musical numbers are their worst problems.

Instead, they’re involved in matters of life and death. I’m hoping the life wins out, because it’s far more interesting.