• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 5, 2018

The title of the new Showtime drama “The Chi” reflects the current vogue for lazy abbreviation.

Forgive me for not knowing immediately what “The Chi” even meant when I first encountered it. It is positioned here as a nickname for Chicago, perhaps one that is used in some of the city's diverse neighborhoods. I had never heard of it or read it before.

In the first episode of “The Chi,” however, unless I missed it, no one said “The Chi” in any references to Chicago, whose other nicknames over the years have included “ChiTown,” “Chicagoland” and “The Windy City” (this one being particularly well-earned).

I am not a connoisseur of contemporary nicknames for some of our major cities. I am aware that some people now refer to Atlanta, for example, as “The A-T-L,” but I have never heard anyone refer to New York as “The N-Y-C.”

If I seem to take a dim view of city nicknames, then blame my upbringing in Philadelphia. Despite the ease with which many cut down the city's five-syllable name to “Philly,” our mother wouldn’t allow it. There was nobility in the city's full name, she instructed, and pride was to be taken in our roots there.

Whether or not the people who refer to Philadelphia as Philly or the Chicagoans who supposedly call their home town “The Chi” are equally prideful of their hometowns I do not know.

In the TV show premiering Sunday night called “The Chi,” the city of Chicago does not emerge in the first episode as a “character” in the show, despite the fact that the show takes place there (and was evidently filmed there too).

As a location for a new TV drama about urban grit and the tragedies that spring from such environments, Chicago is well-chosen. Everyone has read the headlines in the last few years about the violence and escalating murder statistics there.

“The Chi” takes place in a neighborhood in which such violence is commonplace. In the first episode alone, two young people are shot to death in separate incidents.

The series is about the community of people who were closest to each of the victims and how these two communities will now be brought into proximity and contact with each other as the two murders come to intersect.

Here is where a TV critic who has been on the same beat for many years faces the challenge of how to consider new TV shows on their own merits instead of instinctually comparing them to similar shows that came before.

For example, where “The Chi” is concerned, I wrote in my notes: “It wants to be 'The Wire,' but it lacks that show's authenticity.” “The Wire” was an HBO drama series about the mean streets of Baltimore that became a legend.

Its final season ended back in 2008, but it was such a high-quality show that it casts a shadow of comparative judgement over similar shows such as “The Chi” that cover some of the same territory.

Or maybe such comparisons would not be necessary at all if “The Chi” was simply a better show. “This is so boring it's like torture,” I wrote at one point in my notes, although the story and its pace did pick up soon after I wrote that.

Even more damning was this notation: “It has nothing new to say.” With all due respect to the people who evidently worked hard on this show, it is not unreasonable to dismiss “The Chi” as yet another TV show, among many, that aims to explore the phenomenon of urban violence, its consequences and its seeming intractability.

One could also say, rightfully, that it can't hurt to have another TV show stressing this same subject either. If the premiere episode of “The Chi” is uneven at best, its best feature is its cast of relatively unknown actors (including Jahking Guillory in the photo above) for whom this Showtime series represents a lucky break.

Despite the shortcomings of Episode 1, I look forward to watching Episode 2 to find out what happens next.

“The Chi” premieres Sunday (January 7) at 10 p.m. Eastern on Showtime.