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Little but language sets 'Boondocks' apart

Cartoonist Aaron McGruder's new animated TV series feels stale, a rehash of social issues that fails to provoke either guffaws or deep thinking.

By CHASE SQUIRES
Published November 6, 2005

	[Publicity photo]
	In the Cartoon Network series, Riley is one of two brothers being raised by their grandfather in the suburbs.

REVIEW: The Boondocks premieres at 11 tonight on Cartoon Network's late night Adult Swim. Grade: C.

You can't say that on television. Can you?

The n-word, that is. And you can, apparently. A lot.

Cartoonist Aaron McGruder brings the n-word to television tonight with a vengeance, opening his new animated series The Boondocks - based on his newspaper comic strip of the same name - by using it 17 times in a half-hour.

If anyone is counting.

"I think it makes the show sincere," McGruder told television critics when he introduced his Cartoon Network show this summer. "I just think that at a certain point we all have to realize that sometimes we use bad language. And the n-word is used so commonly, not only by myself, but by a lot of people I know, that it feels fake to write around it and to avoid using it."

In his 30-minute show about a grandfather, Robert Jebediah Freeman, who moved to the suburbs to raise his grandchildren Huey and Riley, McGruder isn't shy about discussing race in America.

Race isn't always the main topic (see the second episode, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, when grandad takes in a hooker). But as it is in the comic strip, race is an undercurrent that affects the way young Riley and Huey see the world, and the way others react to them.

So the n-word is there. Deal with it.

It's in song lyrics, it's in dialogue. Kids say it, grownups say it, white people say it, black people say it.

"I think the n-word is okay, as long as they say it," one white character says to another.

"I understand that the word offends a lot of people," McGruder said. "Look, that's what late night cable is for, I guess. You don't have to hear it at 8 o'clock, but you sure can hear it at 11:30 or 11 o'clock on Adult Swim if you so desire. It will be there for you."

But why pay so much attention to one word? Sadly, because it's the most interesting thing The Boondocks animated show brings to the tube. The first two episodes provided to critics in advance aren't laugh-out-loud funny, don't break new ground in the debate over race and economic class, and don't do much more than rehash old stereotypes and make points that have been made before.

The stories are simple, the jokes are stale. For all the controversy and emotion that The Boondocks stirs up as a newspaper strip, viewers probably will expect more from the show.

McGruder sure as shooting tries to stir something up, opening the first episode with Huey dreaming he's in front of a crowd of white people telling them, "Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11."

But somehow, none of that seems shocking. Maybe that's why he has to resort to a racial epithet that even equal-opportunity-offender Don Rickles won't use.

Future episodes may offer more substance, with stories including The Trial of R. Kelly, Huey's version of a Christmas play called The Adventures of Black Jesus, and one where Martin Luther King Jr. awakens from a coma and his "turn the other cheek" philosophy labels him a terrorist sympathizer in today's post-9/11 climate.

As for the first two episodes, they're well-drawn. The colors are pretty. And we only hear the n-word eight times in the second episode.

If anyone is counting.

[Last modified November 3, 2005, 12:08:03]