The sewer pipe in our house broke last week, so we really needed some fun and frothy TV as we waited for the plumbers. Our go-to for comedy has always been Modern Family for gayness as well as humor, followed by 2 Broke Girls for same, plus women. We like Brooklyn Nine-Nine for hilarity, edginess and some gay. But since it's Black History Month, we decided we really needed some black*ish .
We are not really sitcom people here in our household. We like drama. Lots of it. The occasional Mike & Molly, Mom or The Big Bang Theory is good. And the aforementioned MF and 2BG. We loved the brief run of The B �" in Apt 23. All consistently funny, if not all gay-themed. We have enjoyed the season's new CBS sitcom Life in Pieces, mostly for the stellar cast. We binged Transparent. We love Orange Is the New Black, although we resist the idea that show is a comedy, even if the Emmys and other awards shows have deemed it that. But with the exception of sitcom premieres where we want to do the thumbs up or down, we don't have a DVR must-list for sitcoms. Life is too short, drama too engaging.
So we hadn't seen black*ish in a while. Did we forget how pants-pissingly funny this show is? Apparently. We binged the first half of season two, having only seen a few episodes previously. Starring Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana Ross' daughter), Wanda Sykes, Laurence Fishburne, Jenifer Lewis (one of the most underrated comedians on TV), Raven Symone and four terrific young actors as the children of Anderson and Ross' characters, Dre and Rainbow Johnson, this show is perfectly cast, and all black.
For years (decades, really) there was a seeming TV blackout on series with black casts outside of BET network. The few shows (all sitcoms) with black casting were relegated to the WB and Fox. So much so, in fact, that the WB (now merged with the CW) was considered a black network. When David Bowie died last month, it was revealed he had taken MTV to task publicly, on-air, for not showcasing black performers.
We're not sure why this color bar still continues to be such an issue in 2016. Many shows have seamlessly moved from white-on-white to diverse, while others seem stuck in the all-white groove. As we wait impatiently for TV to catch up to true LGBT awareness and casting, we have solidarity with blacks, Latinos and Asians waiting to see themselves reflected on the tube, not just peripherally.
Last week, Steven Spielberg, who has regrettably protested the plan to elide some older white members of the Academy in favor of more people of color, spoke out in advance of the Feb. 28 Oscars. Spielberg has focused more on TV in recent years, co-creating and executive producing a plethora of series including some we have loved, like Smash, Under the Dome, The Whispers, Extant and this season's Minority Report. In voicing his displeasure with more inclusivity at the Academy, Spielberg brushed off charges of racism by saying he had two adopted children who were non-white and that he had been "colorblind all my life." The luxury of "colorblindness" is peculiar to white people, since they aren't dealing with structural racism on a daily basis like people of color are. Minority Report is his first show that has truly diverse casting.
For our part, we struggle with the obviousness of all-white casting or pretend multicultural casting like The Single Person of Color Who Is Best Friends With the Lead White Character. We're looking at you, Mike & Molly, Elementary, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds, The Good Wife, Scream Queens, Grandfathered.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is set in New York City, yet as the cast has rotated, it has still stayed predominantly white. Ice-T is a long-time cast member, Raul Esparza joined the cast in 2012, and B.D. Wong was a recurring cast member until last year. (Wong is also gay, and Esparza has come out as bisexual.) But two people of color on a show set in New York? Reminds us of Friends, but at least that show was 20 years ago.
These tropes must die. People of color, just like LGBT people, can't just be dropped into storylines to create faux multicultural casting. There are plenty of shows with actual multicultural casts that are dynamic and highly rated. Certainly all the Shonda Rhimes shows have managed to achieve centrally located characters of color in the plot landscape without that strained trope of the isolated person of color who only has white friends.
Nevertheless, TV is getting marginally better at adding blackness. (One aside here: Beyonce's Super Bowl half-time show caused such a furor because she and the women in the Formation routine raised their fists in a black power salute, White America may still be struggling with Real Blackness on the tube. The allegation that her performance led to attacks on police officers is both ludicrous and racist. Bey was fabulous. Suck it up, White America. Nobody had that reaction to Kendrick Lamar's magnificent performance on the Grammys on Feb. 15.) The reality of how race is portrayed on the tube makes black*ish all the more important, although there was a lot of pushback on social media when it first debuted. But we need more TV like this (and Telenovela and Fresh Off the Boat), fabulous TV that also allows non-white viewers something they rarely get: seeing themselves in the forefront, not the background or as the sidekick to the main white character.
As for our community, the LGBT viewer gets two lesbian actors on the show and one lesbian character. The lesbian character, Rhonda, played by Raven-Symone, is Dre's sister. So although she's recurring, she's not tangential. Sykes, also an out lesbian, plays Dre's boss. It's major that there are black lesbian actors in the cast and that the black lesbian character is not a drop-in playing a two-for-one multicultural role like we usually have on the tube where the one black/Latina/Asian character is also the one LGBT character. We're done with that. So if you haven't seen black*ish, watch. Part of the Wednesday comedy lineup on ABC.
Gets better?
We're not sure about another new sitcom, The Real O'Neals, which premieres March 2. Based loosely on the life of Mr. It Gets Better, Dan Savage, ABC says, "The series will chronicle the lives of a close-knit Chicago family with Catholic roots, whose personal secrets will reveal their real lives and a reality check after they come clean to each other." That includes son Kenny, 16, coming out as gay.
We feel like we've already seen this show a couple of seasons ago when it was called The McCarthys and was on CBS. That sitcom took place in Boston, one of the sons was gay, though not a teenager, the family was working-class Catholic. Like The Real O'Neals, The McCarthys featured a strong mother as the central character. In the latter, that role was played by Roseanne alum Laurie Metcalf. In The Real O'Neals, it's Raising Hope alum Martha Plimpton (daughter of Keith Carradine, currently co-starring in Madam Secretary).
The Real O'Neals may work better than The McCarthys, and could be more like The Goldbergs, which started out stilted, found its groove and has been going strong since its 2013 debut (still has no gay characters, though). The O'Neals' gay son Kenny (Noah Galvin), 16, is the middle child. His older brother Jimmy is 17 (we hope there will be no Irish twins jokes), an athlete and anorexic (which is stunningly rare in boys and doesn't seem sitcom material since a percentage of sufferers, nearly all women and girls, die of it). The youngest child is Shannon (Bebe Wood), 14, and she is described as "very creepy."
What gives us hope about this show, other than Plimpton, who brings 110% to every show she's involved in, is Noah Galvin, who is himself gay. The Real O'Neals executive producer Todd Holland, who is gay, told the AP he really wanted a gay actor for the role of Kenny, but legally couldn't advertise for a specific orientation due, ironically, to anti-discrimination laws. Galvin, 21, told Holland and the AP he is "eager to be an advocate for gay rights." Galvin said, "As a gay man, this is a landmark role on network television. It should not be played by a straight man pretending to be gay."
We're not exactly sure what makes the role "landmark," since it's hardly the first gay role on network TV and there are gay teens over on The Fosters kissing right now, there have been gay teens on Days of Our Lives, also kissing, and Glee was largely a show about gay teens, and the landmark gay role right now on the very same network is on American Crime, but we're sure it feels landmark to Galvin, as it's also his first TV role. We find it sweet that he's so ready to be a spokesperson for young gays.
Galvin said he came out to his mother when he was 14. and his peers had no trouble with it. He feels there's a generational divide when it comes to acceptance of LGBT people, which we wish we could agree with, but we're glad it's been his experience. Galvin told the AP he's been talking about being gay since he came out. "It was important to me that they [other gay teens] have someone who is gay and is out and is willing to be a spokesman for it," he said.
For its part, ABC is throwing itself behind the show, which spurred talk of a boycott by the anti-gay American Family Association and Family Research Council, which certainly ginned up interest from us. The objection to the series is Savage's involvement. Although The Real O'Neals deals with the family's Catholicism and how it relates to issues within the family like Kenny's gayness, the two hate groups believe the show will, you know, attack God and glamorize Satan. That alone should make us want to watch. ABC has played up the controversy, so clearly they were hoping we'd have that response. Plus Galvin really is adorable.
Speaking of adorable, the new season of RuPaul's Drag Race is ready to drop, and among the judges will be designer Marc Jacobs, singer/80s icon Debbie Harry and the Siblings Sedarai. Sashay, squirrel friends.
Two bits of hilarity you must see are James Corder and Sia doing Carpool Karaoke (yes, we told you about this last time, and we are obsessed) and Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon on the Feb. 13 episode of SNL as lesbian cat ladies. These may be the funniest things you will ever see. We couldn't even feign indignation over the cat lady skit, it was so true to life. (McKinnon is the first out lesbian on the show, and just brilliant.) And Corder (is there a funnier man on the tube right now?) wearing a wig like Sia's as they drive. OMG, watch!
From the ridiculous to the sublime: if you missed PBS' groundbreaking documentary by Stanley Nelson on The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, be sure to watch it at PBS.org. You can watch it free online, just by citing your local PBS station. The extraordinary film, which has won a slew of awards including the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Documentary, simply could not be more timely. As police officers actually blame Beyonce's black power dance routine (dance routine!) for inciting violence, Nelson's film contextualizes the impact of blackness on American politics.
This is a history that has been left off the books entirely, yet is a foundation chapter in how black activism progressed from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and early 60s to a more radical movement. Then, as now, police were killing black men in the streets. Fred Hampton was shot twice in the head at point-blank range by Chicago police in 1969. He was 21. Mark Clark was killed in the same pre-dawn raid on Hampton's apartment. He was 22. Then, as now, black men were killing other black men. Huey Newton was gunned down in the streets of Oakland in 1989 at 47. PBS funds many significant documentaries for its Independent Lens series, but this is the most riveting and crucial film we've seen in a while. A must-see.
Also a must-see is the new ABC drama The Family, another offshoot of Shondaland, created by Jenna Bans, one of Shonda Rhimes' regular writers for the award-winning Scandal, our fave Beltway drama. It stars Oscar nominee Joan Allen. ABC tells us Allen stars as "villainous Claire Warren, ambitious and manipulative mayor of the fictional city Red Pines, Maine, and matriarch of the Warren family, who announces her candidacy for governor when her son Adam (Liam James) returns after having been kidnapped 10 years previous." The promos pose the question: What if the person claiming to be Adam is not Adam?, which alone would be deeply compelling.
The Family will have a special premiere on Thurs., March 3 in the coveted TGIT Rhimes lineup before it moves to its regular Sunday time slot on March 6. Allen is a stellar actress and highly underutilized, so this is a plum for her and for us. A few other powerhouse actors in the cast are Andrew McCarthy, Alison Pill, Rupert Graves and Zach Gilford.
Finally, the top shows you should be watching right now, beyond what we've noted here, are the stellar American Crime, which is the best gay storyline ever on the tube (with landmark gay roles of the decade), American Crime Story, The Americans (sensing a theme?), How to Get Away with Murder, The Blacklist and Blindspot . There's a lot of crime and punishment happening out there, both in the nation and on the tube. So for that, and the elephant in the room of national politics, which we have given up writing about for Lent, you know you really must stay tuned.