Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key in "Key & Peele"
Comedy Central’s new sketch show “Key & Peele” (Tuesday, 10:30 p.m. Eastern) is neither funny nor daring. And since these are the show’s two goals, it has failed miserably.
“Key & Peele’s” deep flaws have gone unnoticed by the majorityofreviewers, and I suspect this is due to the attractiveness of the package: Comics Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are black folk who, like most white critics, want to move past race. In our sincere but hasty desire to actualize this mythical post-racist world, Key and Peele are the jackpot. Two light-skinned black men, middle-class in mannerism, who, like our black president, have white mothers. (It’s also been popular with viewers; the show was Comedy Central’s most-watched premiere since 2009, and was just picked up for a second season.)
On one hand, this is a genuinely good thing. The black experience is hugely varied, existing outside of the limited narratives typically shown in film, television and music. These narrow definitions play a destructive role in how the world sees black people and how black people see themselves. Key and Peele address this tension and frustration by juxtaposing black identities, their own and their characters’, with black caricatures in popular culture.
As the daughter of an African-American father and an Asian mother, I’m tempted to support their efforts. In theory it’s interesting for America to hear about the mixed experience. But “Key & Peele” is less about the complexities of navigating the often tricky multi-racial road, and more about the cheap humor of “White people talk like this,” and “Black people talk like this” — with black characters deciding whether they’ll talk white or black in a given situation. This premise is the basis of nearly every single sketch.
White talk / black talk is an old and lazy shtick. This “Simpsons” moment from 18 years ago mocks both the comedy and how eager white audiences are to embrace racial comedy that doesn’t address real racism:
Homer watches a black comic’s stand-up routine:
Comedian: Yo, check this out: black guys drive a car like this. [Leans back, as though his elbow were on the windowsill] Do, do, ch. Do-be-do, do-be-do-be-do. Yeah, but white guys, see, they drive a car like this. [Hunches forward, talks nasally] Dee-da-dee, a-dee-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee. [Audience howls with laughter]
Homer: Ah ha ha, it’s true, it’s true! We’re so lame!
Key and Peele do have a few funny moments that show genuine potential for great comedy. The “Lunch With Greatness” sketch in which black actors playing Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. fight for the audience’s approval is one of their funniest. But the show’s largest flaw is its preoccupation with translating a particular black experience for liberal white sensibilities. Its eagerness to avoid offense hangs over every tepid sketch about race, sketches already laboring under excessive gentleness and lack of imagination. In each sketch black people are impeded by their own blackness, or more specifically black men cling to an idea of black masculinity, one that Key and Peele suggest is a needless performance.
Look at the following sketches from the first three episodes. Each either attempts to make a certain black masculinity look ridiculous or show the “true” blackness hidden by blacks operating in a white world.
Vain slaves at an auction:
Black traffic reporter:
Black man in doctor’s office:
Key and Peele never show the reasons behind the performance of whiteness or blackness, and this is why the show is politically problematic and far less funny that it could be. On “Key & Peele,” racism isn’t a real or serious threat. All white people mean well, and the burden is now on black folk to figure out how to behave and adapt. The only sketches that are explicitly about racism are historical and the only racists in the first few episodes are Nazis and slave owners. This makes the black characters seem like fools and the result is a show that makes fun of blacks in a way white liberals will allow themselves to enjoy, under the guise of “talking about race”.
This is the defining difference between “Chappelle’s Show” and “Key & Peele” (which in its staging and presentation is straining to position itself as Chappelle’s successor). But Dave Chappelle didn’t care about offending whites or avoiding truly painful moments or topics, and that’s why he was funnier.
“Keegan and I, we’re pretty good, I think our personal taste and our personal sense of adventure doesn’t go too much across this line, we don’t like to make fun of victims. We like to make fun of hypocrites, of bullies.”
But who exactly are the bullies in “Key & Peele”? Judging from the majority of their sketches, the main oppressive force the duo faces is a certain notion of blackness, particularly black masculinity. The pressure to conform to race appropriate behavior does exist. Many people of color are familiar with accusations of “acting white,” but this pressure is a symptom of the larger problem — that they are living in a racist world full of racist ideas and are negotiating their own identification with or against that society. The most powerful comedy is based on pain and discomfort. Patrice O’Neal’s comedy on race for example, is incredible. But Key and Peele fail to ever address the violence of racism, literal or figurative, and this timidity leaves their material lifeless.
Unless you are Bill Cosby (who avoids race almost completely), comedy without bitterness, venom or pain, is no comedy at all. Key and Peele have the grit of a cotton ball. What does it mean that in order for two black comedians to get rave reviews, they must be stripped of the very weapons that are the essence of comedy? One even looks like Elvin from “The Cosby Show” — that’s the level of non-threatening that this show is operating on.
If they’d only take off their kid gloves, they might actually make comedy about race that feels real.
“Repulsion” is an emotional response that darts past the smug butterfly nets of intellect and rationale to expose my true and shameful feelings: Nothing turns my stomach like a stranger’s display of vulnerability. This reaction sickens me, in turn, and begins a cycle of nausea and self-loathing. I am repulsed, revulsed and repulsed again.
I say a stranger’s vulnerability and not a friend’s, because a loved one’s vulnerability is less of a risk to them, and so less of a burden to me, the witness. In the split moment that a person is vulnerable, or when we project a vulnerability onto them, we become responsible for their existence in the world. In seventh grade, the year-supreme of vulnerability, I overheard a girl in my class talking about her excitement over the year’s first dance. Her mother was taking her to get her hair done, she said, and to buy her a new dress. My skin prickled with discomfort. Didn’t she know the dance wasn’t a “get your hair done” kind of big deal? On the night of the dance, everyone was in a casual dress or jeans. She showed up with an elaborate updo and a ball gown. That moment has forever seared itself in my mind. I wanted to throw up and cry.
This repulsion toward vulnerability is really a resentment at being put in charge of a person who doesn’t know how to play the game of affecting invincibility. The main purpose of this game is pretending death will never come; the smaller goal is to pretend that we are all perfectly self-sufficient. This is why so many people were outraged at Lana del Rey’s “Saturday Night Live” performance: She stopped playing the game and forced us to bear witness to her crippling fear. This is also why people abuse the elderly and disabled and animals — their vulnerability is too obvious and provokes hostile resentment.
But here’s where it gets tricky: When we’re revolted by someone’s vulnerability, we split into two. We imagine that person’s vulnerability in the eyes of the rest of the world, and we ourselves are one of those other people, watching. We’re watching the interaction between ourselves and that person, simultaneously, from the inside and the outside. Our repulsion becomes sadness as we watch ourselves reject them — because if they are vulnerable, then we are, too.
Almost fainting or willing yourself into non-existence is a large part of the Tim and Eric viewing experience, and if you haven’t seen them before, you might have to take the grossness in doses. Start with the more easily digestible, and amazing, Paul Rudd “Celery Man” clip.
And here’s “Biology for Foreign Men,” on “the chubs”:
Chubs aside, the show’s true comic genius lies in its cultivation of moments of sincerity toward increasingly obsolete cultural norms: ideas of success, professionalism, sexuality, masculinity, entertainment or social interaction. It’s this sincerity that causes excruciating discomfort, for witnessing someone else’s belief in something we’ve decided is a joke, is pure vulnerability.
Look at the “petite feet” sketch below. Cowboys play pool. They hear a woman’s footsteps. The woman turns out to be a man with the footfall of a woman. The cowboys get onstage and sing a song. A song about a man with the feet of a woman. This is all funny on its own, but the sketch’s main brilliance is the “actor” playing the petite-footed man and the surrounding extras. They aren’t in on the joke, not in the same way that Tim and Eric are. This is true for most of the supporting actors and extras in the majority of Tim and Eric sketches. In their “Billion Dollar Movie,” a man delivers the duo new work uniforms. They dance around in their new clothes, while the man stands there … and continues to stand there long past the time we’ve expected the scene to cut. He looks uncomfortable, and in turn, I want to throw up.
Just reading ”bottom of the pile” makes me queasy.
These actors have either been given no direction, or purposefully incongruent direction. Their presence is awkward and forced, or often worst of all, they’re genuinely having fun, excited to participate in showbiz, not knowing that we’re laughing. It’s this not knowing, a lack of awareness of context that makes us so uncomfortable. Half of the whole is in on the joke — and half of the whole is not. The burden this imbalance places on us is why many people can’t stomach Tim and Eric, don’t understand them, or walked out of their Sundance screening. But this is exactly the reason why Tim and Eric are brilliant.
It’s important to mess with the spiritual structure of the world — the architecture of ideas, institutions, identities and even the structure of filmmaking. Only by doing this can the ludicrous nature of the game be revealed. Maybe one day we will overcome our repulsion toward weakness and admit our fragility on a daily basis. On that day Tim and Eric will no longer be unsettling, but until then, in a very twisted way, they’re helping us get there.
30 Rock, Two Broke Girls, Parks and Rec, How I Met Your Mother
On a recent episode of “2 Broke Girls,” the following writing somehow made it onto television:
(Waitress to dissatisfied customer)
Waitress: Would you like to see the menu again?
Customer: This is crap, I wanted Muenster.
Waitress: Well, I wanted to be running a Fortune 500 company instead of waiting on a toxic man-child like yourself. But we can’t always get what we want, so order something else, put it in your pie hole and get on with your damn life.
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I hadn’t realized my taste in comedy was so elitist until I watched some of the new multi-camera sitcoms and observed what I had assumed was an already long-dead form of comedy. When I say “new,” I’m referring to multi-camera shows that have persisted after the advent/rise of the single-camera sitcom. If, like me, you’ve spent recent years watching “30 Rock,” “Arrested Development,” “Louie” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” it’s a completely different experience to tune into talked-about shows like “Whitney,” “2 Broke Girls” and “Are You There, Chelsea?”
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to shoot a sitcom. There’s the traditional multi-camera style of “I Love Lucy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Seinfeld” — as seen currently on hits like “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two and a Half Men.” On the other hand, “30 Rock,” “Arrested Development” and “The Office” use a more cinematic single-camera shooting style. Multi-camera shows usually have a live audience or laugh track; single-camera shows dispense with the stage metaphor and have no laugh track. For you gamers, it’s somewhat analogous to the difference between a side-scrolling video game like Mario Brothers and a first-person shooter, like Halo.
A testament to my solipsism, I hadn’t seen any of the new multi-camera shows (all of which are more highly rated than those I regularly watch) until recently, when the matter was brought to a glaring point. The deeper we get into our Internet-powered, on-demand culture bubbles that let us watch only the things we care about, the more jarring it is to see things that have mainstream, popular appeal. For the past several years, I’ve been experiencing comedy in a completely cinematic form as opposed to the more vaudevillian stylings of its television roots. These single-camera shows — even in faux-documentary style, like “The Office” — are more polished, with music, editing, shooting styles, lenses and lighting that all aid in the creation of each show’s particular timing, realism and comedic atmosphere.
Comparatively, shows like “Are You There, Chelsea?” or “2 Broke Girls“ feel simultaneously contrived — the seams of construction are so obvious — but also more honest in their presentation. The actors remain actors and rarely disappear into their characters. They are in makeup and hair and costume, underneath a harsh light, standing on their mark, trying to deliver jokes on cue, pausing for laughter. There’s a certain grit and intensity in relating to the actors as well as the characters they perform.
If you’re accustomed to single-camera comedy, watching a multi-camera show is a startling change. Most films and shows eliminate all signs of performance, thereby boosting realism, by inserting multiple distancing layers (editing, music, specific camera lenses, etc.) between the viewer and the actor. Consider this scene from ”30 Rock”:
The hand-held camera, quick edits and natural lighting all aid in our acceptance of the performance and set as real, thereby helping the jokes hit their mark. If this same scene occurred on a multi-camera set, with typical TV lighting, a stationary camera and even slightly slower editing, we would suddenly be aware of Alec Baldwin instead of Jack Donaghy, and Tracy Morgan instead of Tracy Jordan.
In comparison, the actors on multi-camera shows barrel forward with fascinating vulnerability. Each actor has jokey jokes to pound out and laughs to wait for. An actor’s reliance on his partner’s performance in a scene is perhaps nowhere as clear as on a multi-cam show. All this without the helpful and flattering gauze of expensive cameras and location shooting. This might make the multiple-camera sitcom the perfect place for comic writers and actors to prove their ability, and simultaneously, since it is so exposing, the riskiest place for the untalented. You can’t hide in a multi-camera show, and unfortunately, most of these show are less than stellar. As the more sophisticated comedies have gone single-camera, we’ve been left without a ”Seinfeld,” “Cosby Show,” “Dick Van Dyke” or even “Laverne and Shirley” to showcase great comic ”stage” acting.
But though the writing on ”Arrested Development,” for example, is smarter and funnier, the simplicity of multi-camera shows is refreshing. The writing is often horrendously bad and the jokes consist mainly of characters insulting each other, but for all their sexual idiocy and reliance on racist caricatures, these shows have worth despite themselves.
When we watch these shows, we are part of an audience in a way that we aren’t in the more intimate viewing experiences that single-camera shows offer us. The theater-like form of the multi-camera show requires us to embrace artifice in an era where performance and deliberate creation are hidden.
As our society continues to create new ways to communicate while we remain in individual isolation, the multi-camera sitcom might be one of the last places many of us participate in a communal viewing experience (even if it’s a simulated one). Movies are increasingly viewed at home and hardly anyone can afford to go to live theater. As I struggled through “I Hate My Teenage Daughter,” I felt a tingle of that camaraderie that arises when we’re part of an audience.
The live studio audience, a set that is very obviously a set, or even a laugh track, as simple and stupid and taken for granted as it is, are subtle and powerful tools that shape our viewing experience. An agreement between the actors, the set and the audience is loud and clear: We’re putting on a show for your entertainment. For 21 minutes we experience, in the teeniest-tiniest way, the essence of comic theater. Let’s hope someone remembers what these shows can be and makes one that’s actually worth watching.
NBC’s “Parenthood” is a trick show that people tuckered out by life are eager to believe in. I am one of these tired people. Its bustling mornings, carefully disheveled interiors, and impromptu kitchen dance-parties create the illusion of safe chaos. “Parenthood” knows that for the modern television viewer, controlled disorder is better than none, for safe chaos tricks you into believing that what you’re watching isn’t totally sanitized. Strategically placed ad-libbing, background chatter and overlapping dialogue combine to slyly convince you of its authenticity — that not only does “Parenthood” belong to an age of realism and daring and diversity, but it’s helping create it.
It reminds me very much of my eighth-grade teacher who so desperately hoped to be the mythic sage who made a difference, but failed to realize his well-meaning musings about why “black families can’t stay together these days” did little to raise our awareness of anything other than his own desire to seem good. And this is what “Parenthood” does in its broad-stroke coverage of everything that could happen in the life of a modern American family. Since we’re all terrified of being different, there is some point in airing things we might still regard with shame: infidelity, moving back with your parents, not going to college, raising an autistic child, and, finally, interracial dating. As the end product of an interracial date, I find this last theme most interesting. On the show, it’s explored in two story lines.
In one, Crosby Braverman (Dax Shephard), the youngest son in the Braverman clan, is reunited with Jasmine (Joy Bryant), an old one-night stand who surprises Crosby with his half-black 5-year-old son, Jabbar. Crosby and Jasmine rekindle their old romance but eventually split apart.
And in the second story line, teenager Haddie Braverman (Sarah Ramos) falls in love with Alex (Michael B. Jordan), a boy so beyond her in sexual energy that a more forced union could hardly be imagined by anyone who spent two seconds in high school. But in “Parenthood,” love is blind — as is a white middle-class family, who, save for one or two lines by characters denying their ability to ever be racist, makes no real reference to the black paramour’s blackness. And here is the point that many of us still have difficulty understanding: Pretending to not see race ignores the experiences of people of color and the racism they do sometimes experience. Race-blindness is a well-meaning assertion of a white worldview, one where race is never an issue.
Comedian Franchesca Ramsey’s recent parody video “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” is an excellent example of how segregated these realities are. Many black female friends and family members posted a link to the video on Facebook pointing to its hilarious accuracy and mentioning additional comments commonly received — for example “You’re so smart for a black girl.” Many whites, however, found the video offensive, and Ramsey even appeared on Anderson Cooper’s show, “Anderson,” in defense of it.
With its black characters’ curiously race-less existence, “Parenthood” believes it’s nurturing a helpful attitude. Instead, it supports the kind of backlash that Ramsey faced — and this is where things get tricky. How does a television show address race in a real way without alienating those who need to hear the discussion the most? (The people enraged by Ramsey’s video, for example.) Those who point out the continuing existence of inequalities, especially about race, will be attacked. In the age of Obama, where few whites witness blatant discrimination, accusations of racism feel like a betrayal. We’re all supposed to be on the same team now, and a prime-time show, naturally, would rather play it safe and flatter viewers rather than risk ostracizing them. Especially this show, built entirely around stroking its audience to sleep.
The best recent example of a show that handled race well is the first season of Louis C.K.’s “Louie.” It directly addressed white entitlement, smartly cushioning it within self-deprecating comedy. Every serious observation on race was followed by the most absurd and unsophisticated (and funny) joke. Because Louie was the one who made the mistakes, he could tell you about white male privilege. We would listen because we didn’t feel threatened … and then he would make a joke about having sex with a fat woman. In this strategic way, “Louie” escaped preachiness.
“All I want to do with these scenes is talk about these things. Air them out,” Louis C.K. told me. “I very much doubt if the show will please enough people consistently enough to be a great success. It occurs to me that you yourself may see things in upcoming episodes that you won’t like, because I’m playing on every side of the line …
“I think that what’s on TV today has left people too divided, inebriated and expecting only to see shows that agree with them and soothe them. The vast majority will find it too hard to watch something that takes no clear position and satisfies nothing, only opens sores and stirs curiosity.”
The complexity of race in America can even be addressed in two lines from the second season of “Treme.” Harley, a white street musician in a post-Katrina New Orleans, is robbed at gunpoint by a black teenager. As the teen flees, Harley says, “You’re making a bad choice, son.” The boy stops, turns around, replies, “I ain’t your … son” — and shoots Harley in the face. In under a minute we’re confronted with the history of white American paternalism and its many consequences.
“Parenthood’s” silence about its black characters’ blackness reflects our genuine desire for things to be different, but also our willingness to ignore the reality of the experiences of people of color in an eagerness to move ahead to post-racialism. This underlines two things: Things have changed, in that there’s a collective desire for equality. But the main problem remains: It is still a white playing field, with white main characters who want to enjoy a world without racism. They’re the ones who have decided to move on.
In a clumsy effort to avoid racist portrayals, many TV shows and films have decided to make all black characters superhumanly virtuous or placed them in positions of authority. David Estes, as director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center and Claire Danes’ boss in “Homeland,” is one of the latest. In “Parenthood,” Alex is a high school dropout, in AA and a volunteer at a homeless shelter. He is a positive influence on Haddie’s life to the point of corniness. Meanwhile, career-minded Jasmine, nicely embodying the “strong, independent black woman” role and dancing for Alvin Ailey, no less, is cheated on by Crosby.
This virtue, they think, will distract us from the fact that all the main characters, the ones allowed to be truly human with successes and faults and a range of emotion, are still white. TV is still a white world, one where racism exists, but in small amounts that allow us all to sleep easily.
And in this day and age, even some of the gains black people have made on TV are at risk. As “30 Rock’s” black male characters Toofer, Tracy, Grizz and Dot Com pointed out in Season 4:
Toofer: You will not believe what just happened to me. A guy on the subway just called me a ”biggledeeboo.”
Grizz: What’s a ”biggledeeboo”?
Tracy: It’s an 18th-century word for dark-skinned Moor. I’ve learned the word ”black” in every language, just so I know when to be offended.
Dot Com: Well, I’m sure it was just an isolated incident.
Tracy: I’m telling you, Dot Com, old-school racism is back.
Toofer: How can racism be back when we elected a black president?
Tracy: Barry Obama is the one who brought it back!
Toofer: So you’re saying that racism is back because white people no longer feel sorry for us?
Tracy: Hey, something’s going on. You know what I saw last night? A Slomin’s Shield commercial with a black burglar!
Dot Com: That’s not good.
Grizz: Come to think of it, I saw a white judge on “Law and Order” last night.
Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key in "Key & Peele" 
30 Rock, Two Broke Girls, Parks and Rec, How I Met Your Mother 
Joy Bryant and Dax Shephard in "Parenthood" 