Picturing the Upfronts

OK, turns out Vanessa is going to college (see previous post), NYU, in fact, same as Blair, Dan, and evidently Georgina Sparks (who somehow looks wrong for this show to me. Not unattractive, but lacking the delicate prettiness of the other girls). I completely forgot Nate helping her to take the SATs, and still don't remember the circumstances. No news on Serena and I guess Chuck is a little busy running an entire multi-billion dollar empire to consider college, though he has time to galivant around Europe, buying Blair gifts. But for the absence of Dorota, (surely she'd be at Miss Blair's graduation--she's not just in it for the money, right?) and my total confusion about Hazel, Nelly Yuki and the other nameless drones, who were totally seniors, since they were at Blair's SAT pamper party and Nelly got into Yale, caring about who high school queen would be, and Jenny's hair, that was a pretty darn good episode. I knew who the mysterious new NYU student was as soon as they showed him, even to getting a shiver down my spine.

But what I'm really thinking of today, and this doesn't help me with my smart girl stuff but is still important, is the Upfronts. I was just looking at photos of the new shows on ABC, and decided to do a little count. For every one of the fictional new shows (I'm leaving out some reality show with Shark in the title) they have a photo. In every one of those photos a white person is in front, with a second white person slightly behind in the case of all but family shows (where the tall people ((i.e. the parents)) are in the back, and in two of those cases the family is white). I counted 12 people of color, although I'm basing this by mostlty knowing which actor's name went with each face (because there are a lot of familiar faces on their slate, and the few others can be determined by gender-specific process of elimination), and either knowing they were of color or guessing by looking--nearly always at the people on the periphery of the picture. I already know that Sofia Vergara and Lourdes Bendedicto (who cannot act and was just awful on both ER and Dawson's Creek) is Latina, and Rochelle Aytes, who I've never seen before, may be (or Black or mixed), and Ian Gomez (who is great, but is on Cougar Town, a show I wouldn't watch just on the basis of the name) Latino. Lindsay Price (who is one of the three leads on Eastwick) and John Cho (who is toward the front of the photo for Flash Forward, the only one of these shows that remotely appeals) are Asian (or at least partially so), and Reiko Aylesworth is 1/4 Japanese, so I guess she might count,, and Courtney B. Vance is Black, along with, I assume, someone named Robert Wisdom on the show Happy Town. In the show in which Ed O'Neill is married to Sofia Vergara, presumably the kid in between them, Rico Rodriguez, is either her kid from a prior marriage or is supposed to be the product of both of them. That's the show that also features what looks like a "normal" family (i.e. all white), and a gay couple with a baby. At the same time, Ugly Betty, the only Latina led show on the main networks, is moving to death slot Friday (which is good for me because then it won't be up against 30 Rock).

Who cares, right? Boring. But it strikes me that for every step forward characters from formerly disenfranchised groups take, they take a step back. The networks keep trying Black (male) leads, every few years, but when these shows don't work, they won't do it. It's pretty clear from this lineup that when there are black characters, they need to be in the background, and that the order of "threat" from least to most goes, Asian, Latina/Latino, Black. This way, the networks can say they are adding representation from non-white groups, without making any real social strides in terms of actual race-blind casting. But, although by now most Americans have no problem with an Asian kissing a Caucasian character, and they're getting used to Latina/white mixing, Latino/white or Black/white is still very controversial and they are much less likely to go there, and if you have a Black man or Latino man that means you have to add same raced women, and that tips the balance of the show and threatens your viewer base. Most of the Black men on the upcoming shows seem to be older "chief" types who will be less involved in all the mushy kissing and stuff.

Semiotically, the photos are very important. The makeup of the photos is a clear indicator, for the most part, of the actor's place in the pecking order. As far as I can tell, television shows are more hierarchical than the military, with everyone fully aware that they're the "first lead" or the "third female lead." It's obvious that whoever is in front is the first lead (which is why some shows have everyone lined up evenly like Modern Family). The first lead makes more money, and the top four to six may have contracts that say they are in "every known episode," while others may only be in some episodes, which is why Navid can disappear for episodes at a time on 90210. It used to be that actors would get paid even if they weren't on, but I think that changed a few years ago, at least on some networks. I guess I need to look into how that all works.

Maybe I'm reading this all wrong. I've heard no protests about Dixon (who is Black) and Silver (who is white) on 90210, yet they just broke up and it looks as if the goal was to put Silver and Ethan (a white guy) together--except that actor was fired so it won't actually happen. I don't think the CW has put out such a release with yet, though I know they are picking up Vampire Diaries and Melrose Place, but I'll look into it. I'm pretty sure Girlfriends and Everyone Hates Chris won't be on it, taking the last "black shows" off the major networks. I'll try to write about this in the next few days.

Anyhow, I won't do every network--personally the only thing I ever watch on Fox is the occasional Simpsons, though they have a decent slate for next year, and on CBS only How I Met Your Mother, (yes, a show with all white characters--they haven't even bothered to make Josh Radnor or Jason Siegel's characters Jewish), and nothing new they've signed indicates to me that next year will be any different. But I will do NBC.

NBC has always been the liberal network, the highbrow/sophisticated network, but I'm sure they're going to be upping their average age significantly when Jay Leno takes the 10PM hour five nights per week. Chuck is saved, so my venom isn't as strong as it could be for that decision, which I still hope fails miserably, but with the budget cuts on Chuck, if they get rid of characters, or use them less, who will they be? My guess would be the Asian Anna (who face it was on about four episodes anyhow, though she's a fan favorite), the Indian Lester, or the Latino Morgan. Let's hope it's Jeff, though, not because he's white but because he's unpleasant.

Anyhow, due to that, they've only picked up six new shows. The picture of 100 questions shows four white people but someone named Amir Talai is on the cast list and IMDB shows a picture of someone not in that photo. So someone presumably with Middle Eastern Ancestry (the only thing IMDB says is that he was born in San Francisco.) Since I was thinking the cutting of the picures was the fault of the site I was on, not NBC so I did a search. Strangely, the photo on the NBC site includes the Asian looking Elizabeth Ho, off to the right and hence cut off of the original, but not him but two people of color in a six person show is interesting. Community (with John Oliver, yay, but Chevy Chase, boo) has Black actress Yvette Nicole Brown (in back of photo). Trauma, a doctor show I'm not terribly likely to watch, has Black Derek Luke and Latina Aimee Garcia. Only Zap2it has cut Derek out (he's in the way back). I thought the rest were white until I looked up Cliff Curtis, the front man--he's from New Zealand and is of Maori descent, so there's some extreme minority action for you. Parenthood has an actress called Sarah Ramos, but since it's about a giant family, and she's a teenager, and the character has the same last name as the rest of the family, I'm guessing she's playing the Martha Plimpton role from the movie, or Peter Krause and Maura Tierney's kid, hence white.

On Mercy, a show about nurses (which has Michelle Trachtenberg in it so I guess her tenure on Gossip Girl next year will be short), there seen to be three characters of color including Delroy Lindo, who is very cool. Jaime Lee Kirchner is new to me, and her ethnicity is unclear, but she's interesting looking, and Guillermo Diaz was very threatening on Weeds, so it'll be odd to see him on a medical show.

Oh, what do you know, despite the fact I am now officially in a hurry to get to other work, I decided to go ahead and look at Fox (the only other one that has photos yet) and Brothers is an all Black cast (in a sitcom, of course, not a drama), so I was wrong up above. I'm probably the only one who remembers that there already was a show called Brothers, about three white brothers, one of whom was gay. I just looked it up, and although I remember it coming and going, it was on for five years, from 1984-1989. It was not funny. Anyhow, The Cleveland Show (the spinoff of Family Guy) also shows an all black cast, though they are animated. Glee's photo shows a little bit of everyone, including a guy in a wheelchair, but that's no the photo I've seen before. Human Target has Chi McBride, who was so great on Pushing Daisies, (plus Mark Valley who is cool, and Jackie Earle Hailey who is good at being creepy) but no women? Past Life has Ravi Patel, cut off in Zap2it's photo, Sons of Tucson (which I definitely won't be watching) has a Latina woman, and some boys who could be. Wanda Sykes is getting her own late night show. So I guess Fox wins in this sweepstakes by far, which is appropriate as they started off serving "underserved audiences," but in the last few years have not been other than reality-wise. Maybe it's really just ABC that's falling down on the job.

Out of time to actually add the pictures, which wasn't the point anyhow. More tomorrow.