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Two fall sitcoms have black casts but little else in common, though the executive producers of both shows say black-oriented comedies face challenges other shows don't.
By ERIC DEGGANS
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 22, 2001
PASADENA, Calif. -- Flex Alexander just didn't get it.
Hours earlier, the former Homeboys in Outer Space star had faced a roomful of TV critics who picked apart the concept of his new black-centered sitcom for UPN, One on One.
Nearly three years in the making, the show -- about a womanizing sportscaster forced to care for his daughter full time after years as a part-time parent -- drew phrases like "coon comedy" from the critics.
And now, standing at the edge of a cocktail party at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, Alexander felt like a black Rodney Dangerfield: sure to get no respect.
"We've all got to wake up and stop being so damn critical," he said, remembering when Spike Lee called Homeboys "the Amos N' Andy of the '90s." "Jim Carrey can grab his butt cheeks and talk with them and he's a comedy genius. But Martin Lawrence bugs out his eyes a little and he's a coon. It makes no sense."
What Anderson didn't realize is that his lightweight sitcom is on the wrong end of the fight over the future of black-centered television, and ethnic TV in general.
Of more than 35 new TV shows coming to network TV this fall, just two have all-black casts.
Alexander's One on One seems to exemplify the way networks make such shows these days.
Filmed live before an audience with several cameras at once, it's a broad comedy done on a cheap set with lots of sex jokes, blaring canned laughter and hip-shaking swagger. Scheduled in the middle of UPN's Monday night slate of black-oriented comedies, it's the kind of show that black folks watch only because there are black people on-screen, and that white viewers avoid.
But Fox's The Bernie Mac Show, the second new black show, offers another vision.
Filmed with a single camera, like a movie, it uses more expensive high-definition video, balancing the polished distance of film and the immediate flavor of videotape. There is no laugh track telling viewers where the jokes are.
Featuring The Original Kings of Comedy star Bernie Mac in a role drawn from his stand-up act, the series outlines how Mac adopted the children of his drug-addicted sister.
Drawing from the format of reality TV shows, the show shakes up the usual sitcom formula. Mac talks to the camera to explain himself. Written quips appear on-screen in a flash. The whole production has a documentary feel, allowing viewers to feel they're flies on the wall of a very outlandish household.
"I thought, nobody's taken Real World and really done it as a sitcom," said executive producer Larry Wilmore, a former writer on In Living Color who also produced Eddie Murphy's controversial animated series set in a housing project, The PJs. "Not parodying it, but taking things that work best in reality and using it in the sitcom form."
Wilmore is quick to say his show is more than just a "black sitcom," explaining that to prepare for production, he watched films from the French New Wave tradition, such as Breathless and 400 Blows. But he does say he wants to redefine the boundaries of ethnic TV.
"My goal is for people to say "black show' and not think of it negatively," he said.
"Ten years ago, it wasn't that way," he added. "The Cosby Show was on top of the airwaves, Arsenio (Hall) was the king of late night, and In Living Color was the hippest show on television. I don't know what's happened since."
What has happened is that black-centered TV comedy has become a ghettoized genre, used by emerging networks to gain a quick, loyal audience and abandoned once mainstream (read: white) viewers are in sight.
Fox helped kill the form, pitting shows such as Martin, Living Single and New York Undercover against NBC's powerhouse Must-See TV Thursdays. That schedule ensured that black viewers would laugh with Lawrence while white viewers flocked to Jerry Seinfeld's show about nothing.
Later, netlets such as the WB and UPN drafted low-budget series built around black stars, trapping skilled performers such as Steve Harvey, Jamie Foxx, Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana's daughter) and D.L. Hughley in shows beneath their talent.
Nowadays, black-oriented TV comedy has become synonymous with cheaply done, overly broad, poorly produced programs. Aside from HBO's recently departed The Chris Rock Show, no show these days uses black culture to fuel incisive, hip TV comedy.
Not surprisingly, some producers disagree. One on One executive producer Eunetta T. Boone, a former Baltimore Sun sports writer who worked on Damon Wayans' ABC sitcom, My Wife and Kids, and on The Hughleys, said those who dismiss her show may be demanding too much.
"The most rewarding and the most difficult thing in this town is to be a black comedy writer," she said. "You can take a character like Joey (Tribbiani) on Friends, who is extremely buffoonish . . . put that person in a black face, and suddenly he becomes a stereotype. It's a very hard thing to determine."
Indeed, there are themes in both One on One and The Bernie Mac Show that may raise hackles.
Alexander's UPN show centers on a TV sports reporter who is almost childish in his reluctance to be a good father to his daughter. It's a longtime bugaboo for those who study ethnic images in media: the infantilized black man who seems focused on personal pleasure rather than adult responsibility.
Mac's show pushes boundaries in different ways, featuring the comic offering his new kiddie charges a "big a- doughnut" and threatening to "beat them until the white meat shows" (an idle threat Mac winds up explaining to a social worker the kids call to mess with him a bit).
"Bernie Mac says what you want to say," explained the comic, whose reputation for ribald routines is legendary in stand-up comedy circles.
"My grandfather (raised me), and we thought he was so cold . . . because he was "tough love,' " Mac said. "He told you like it was. And I think that's something that's missing today. We want to be friends instead of parents."
For Wilmore, a producer so methodical he once wrote out ad-lib lines for the stars of In Living Color, it's about pushing TV to reflect the multicultural environment already a reality for so many viewers.
"Television doesn't lead (society). . . . Music leads, television follows," he said. "Television takes what we know and presents it a different way -- an echo of culture more than anything else. So it's smart to use (black-oriented themes) and get them in front of people . . . to push the envelope a bit."