Whoopi Goldberg

There are some who would consider the addition of Whoopi Goldberg to a cast to be a windfall. Yours truly is not among them.

However, Goldberg defies astronomical odds and has some funny moments during the season-debut of Chris Rock's acclaimed sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, which airs tonight (CITY at 6:30 p.m., WPIX at 7 p.m.).

Goldberg guest stars as Louise Clarkson, a snooty grandmother who has moved in next door to young Chris (Tyler James Williams) and his family. In tonight's episode, Goldberg makes some great faces as she clashes with Chris' mom (Tichina Arnold) over who should be named the block-watch captain.

Goldberg apparently became a fan of Everybody Hates Chris during its debut season and was asked by co-creators Rock and Ali LeRoi to join the cast for the sophomore campaign. Goldberg won't necessarily appear every week, but her role is designed to be a recurring one.

"There I am praying for roles and you all think, 'Oh, yes, she's got a lot of work!' " Goldberg recently told The Associated Press.

For the uninitiated, Everybody Hates Chris is set in New York in the 1980s and is based loosely on Rock's childhood memories. It originally was shown in the United States on the now-defunct UPN network, but it was renewed to run on the new CW network, which combined the UPN and WB networks.

The heart of what makes Everybody Hates Chris work, of course, is the voiceover commentary provided by Rock.

Sometimes it's just a line here or there thrown in between the actors' dialogue. At other times, brief non-sequitur scenes are created, like the one tonight over which Rock says, "In the late '90s they had the Internet boom, but in the '80s we had the crack boom. It used to take years to become a junkie, but crack took that down to 37 minutes."

Fans of Rock's barking, clipped delivery will understand how funny that sounds coming out of his mouth.

As for Goldberg, we often have found her to be annoyingly overbearing. Certainly, we got sick of her in a series of TV and movie roles that portrayed her as the wiser-than-everyone-else, black-lingo-spoutin' smart-ass.

It'll be a nice change if Everybody Hates Chris uses Goldberg as the butt of the jokes sometimes, rather than allowing her to settle into her usual position as the smugly superior trash-talk disseminator.

On the whole, Everybody Hates Chris probably has at least one more good season in it, but you know how it is with shows that have kids as their main actors.

Already, Williams is not quite as cutesy-poo as he was last year, and the other kids (Tequan Richmond as Drew, Imani Hakim as Tonya and Vincent Martella as Chris' best friend Greg) are bland and stiff at the best of times.

At least Everybody Hates Chris is trying to stay fresh. But it remains to be seen if Whoopi can weave a comedic cushion.