Chico and the Man was an American sitcom which ran on NBC from September 131974 to July 211978, starring Jack Albertson as Ed Brown (The Man), the cantankerous owner of a run down garage in an East Los Angeles barrio, and introducing Freddie Prinze as Chico Rodriguez, an upbeat, optimistic Chicano street kid who comes in looking for a job. It was the first U.S. television series set in a Mexican-American neighborhood.

Ed doesn't want Chico's help; in fact, he distrusts all Chicanos. A hard-drinking widower, he refuses to fit in with the changing neighborhood and has alienated most of the people who live around him. Ed uses ethnic slurs and berates Chico in an effort to get him to leave. But Chico sees potential in the old man and sneaks back in at night to clean up the garage and move into an old van that Ed has parked inside. When Ed sees all the effort Chico has put in, he slowly warms up to Chico and thus starts the relationship. Ed grows to see Chico as a son, although he will deny this fact on many occasions. The chemistry between Jack Albertson's "Ed" and Freddie Prinze's "Chico" was one of the leading factors in making the show a hit in its first two seasons. It started in the top ten and never left there over those seasons.

The show was created by James Komack who produced other shows like The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Freddie Prinze was discovered by Komack after he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in December 1973. Komack thought he would be perfect for the part of Chico Rodriguez. This caused a stir in the Mexican-American community, who thought the part should have been played by a Chicano (Prinze was half Puerto Rican). Therefore, as the show progressed, Chico's background was altered to being Mexican on his father's side and Puerto Rican on his mother's side (with a nod to Freddie's Hungarian ancestry in the same line which stated these facts, as Chico remarks in his Hispanic accent, "...and my grandmother speaks a little Hungarian!"). The Mexican-American community also complained that the show used too many ethnic slurs, but this was the age of Norman Lear and All in the Family.

Energetic Chico wants to form a partnership with cynical Ed Brown in the old man's garage. His efforts bring in customers and the crabby Ed softens toward Chico. After the actor who played him committed suicide, Chico was replaced by 12-year-old Raul. Written by Ed Stephan

Ed Brown was a cantankerous old widower who owned and operated a small filling station in Los Angeles. He hired a fast-talking, cheery young Chicano, Chico Rodriguez, to help him run the place. Since Chico also lived in the garage, the two were always together, and when they weren't bickering between themselves, they came to a greater understanding of each other's generation and culture. They even learned to love each other. When Chico left Ed to start his own business (in actuality, actor Freddie Prinze committed suicide), Ed discovered a new "Chico"-a 12-year-old boy named Raul--and invited him to move in. Written by Marty McKee