"It's not funny!" - Cristela's sister
"It would be if you'd just laugh!" -Cristela

That's pretty much the show in a nutshell.

Cristela is a weird show, and one that I'll say right out exceeded my expectations by a country mile. I expected it to be an insufferable 80s throwback, full of one dimensional characters and an obstructive laugh track. I was mostly right, but there's a crucial detail that solves one of those problems: the main character is not, in any way shape or form, an 80s throwback. She's smart, she's complex, and she's self-aware in her goofiness, so much so that it seems like she (and only she) knows that everyone around her is just a TV cliche, and consequently treats them with the appropriate dismissive spite and wise-assery. She's Liz Lemon living in a Who's the Boss world, and in that role she's very very funny. By ricocheting off of her modern comedy sensibilities, her one-dimensional supporting cast rapidly become much more entertaining than they ought to be. It's a very interesting setup and to my surprise, is mostly works.

Mostly.

The laugh track is awful, we have yet another gaggle of annoying kid actors (though thankfully they're only given a few lines), and because it bears repeating, the laugh track is awful. The joke writing is ok, and occasionally great, but the entire show lives and dies by Cristela's performance as the title character. A lot of the jokes are hacky old-school sitcom gags (and one is stolen word for word from Winston Churchill which- if nothing else- is a pretty gutsy theft), and they're only funny if you let yourself give in to Cristela's natural charisma and spunk; like the quote says up top, it's funny just so long as you laugh.

One last point worth mentioning is that in the two scenes set at the office, Cristela is ten times more racy than the entirety of Black-Ish up to this point, completely unafraid to include bigoted, ignorant characters and make light of them. It's no coincidence that these are some of the funniest scenes in the episode, buoyed by the performance of Cristela's boss (Sam McMurray). What's even more interesting is that the show, perhaps leaning into it's throwback nature by way of Archie Bunker, is not afraid to make McMurray's Trent Culpepper otherwise a charismatic, clever, and arguably even admirable character. That's a really ballsy choice that most sitcoms, and especially Black-Ish, would never make, but here it pays off big time with the biggest laughs of the episode.

I hate the laugh track so much it may eventually scare me off, and Cristela really does require you to meet it halfway and let it charm you, but I'm in for now, and I have to admit that both the show's floor and ceiling appear to be a lot higher than I gave it credit for in my pre-season preview.