http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/arts/television/review-comedy-centrals-new-basketball-show-wins-the-gold-in-ribaldry.html 2016-09-13 22:26:37 Review: Comedy Central’s New Basketball Show Wins the Gold in Ribaldry In the animated series “Legends of Chamberlain Heights,” three freshmen players try to fit in at the world’s raunchiest high school. === Move over, all you basketball wives. Three animated high school basketball players have arrived, and they’re more outrageous in any given five minutes than you are in an entire episode. The newcomers are the stars of Comedy Central’s All of those look like children’s television compared with “Legends,” which begins on Wednesday and is about three freshmen who are trying to establish themselves in their high school’s pecking order while mostly riding the bench during games. Grover prays to a poster of LeBron James and sees himself as a smooth operator, so much so that he goes after the girlfriend of an upperclassman. Jamal doesn’t have Grover’s suaveness but does have a certain resourcefulness that comes in handy when drugs need to be manufactured or a school computer needs to be hacked. Their friend Milk is, well, white, though he’s desperate to act and sound like his two black buddies; his repeated use of a certain racially charged word earns him repeated smacks from Grover. Nothing is sacred in this series: An overweight cheerleader is a nonstop fat joke; sex is often the main topic of conversation; private parts are talked about and exposed; teachers curse like sailors, outside the classroom and in. So if you can’t stand unrelenting vulgarity and heedless insensitivity, stay away. But this show knows that over-the-top can work if the characters are distinctive and appealing, and there’s a point to the crudeness. It’s a lesson that “South Park,” the series immediately preceding this one, has been teaching for years. As with that venerable show, which begins its 20th season on Wednesday, the crassness on “Legends” is coupled with barbed jokes that double as social commentary. In Episode 1, for example, the boys are walking home naked from a party gone wrong. Police officers stop to help — by offering the white boy a ride home. Episode 2 approaches comedic greatness. The students all have to take a “scared celibate” class in which they pair up and care for a robotic baby. Before the episode is over, anti-vaccinators have been lampooned; the question of whether a robot baby can also be used as a bong has been answered; and the students have learned all about the shortcomings of “Robama care.” So wrong, but so funny.