I started watching the sitcom ‘Everybody Hates Chris’ with my son in the middle of last year on Hulu. It’s our second show we’ve watched together – ‘Black-ish’ being the other. I would often stop the video during many episodes to explain some funny and interesting cultural references since I had many of the same experiences as Anthony Anderson and Chris Rock’s characters in their respective shows.

We had fun each time we sat down to watch the shows, but Everybody Hates Chris was a trip down memory lane for me. Even though I didn’t grow up in Brooklyn like Chris Rock’s character, I had a great time revisiting the 1980’s.

Today, we watched the final episode. My son was somewhat disappointed because of the final scene. About 2 minutes into this scene above, I knew EXACTLY what the show was paying homage to. I thought it was a brilliant way to end the episode and the series.

Everybody Hates the G.E.D. is the twenty-second episode of the fourth season of Everybody Hates Chris and the eighty-eighth episode overall. The series finale is a spoof of the episode “Made in America” of the HBO drama series, The Sopranos. Chris Rock’s actual father, Julius Rock (the inspiration for the show’s character), died from peptic ulcer disease in 1988, a year after this episode’s events. One of the many reasons why this show didn’t have a fifth season was because Chris intended the show to end before Julius’s death happened.

In this scene, you will see his father Julius parking his truck. There is a camera close-up of the number 735 painted on his vehicle. This implied Chris’s G.E.D. score, which would be passing. The G.E.D. test is scored out of 800, and yes, in real life, Chris Rock dropped out of high school. I also found this episode interesting because there was no singing of “Everybody Hate’s Chris” at the end like there is on prior episodes.

I may disappoint some of you, but I showed my son the end of The Sopranos after we watched this finale. Yeah, it’s a major spoiler, but I had to show my son where Chris got the idea from. If he ever gets around to watching The Sopranos later in his life, he’ll vaguely remember, but it will make more sense after seeing what led up to the final scene. Hey, I peeked and watched the finale of The Sopranos well before seeing the entire series, and it didn’t ruin the show for me. He’ll still be shocked when he sees it in context. I sure was.

If you haven’t seen the ‘Made In America’ scene from The Sopranos, first you need to see the entire series. But if you don’t care and want to see what Chris Rock was referring to, here you go: