re: The Wonder Years being rebooted with a Black family by ABC

I guess the line "what would you do if I sang out of tune" is no longer applicable?

Oh wow, more race-bait porn. More. More. More!

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Is television somehow incomplete w/o a black reboot of everything?

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You know I'm on your side on this issue, right?

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Well, that made the black inclusion all the more awkward, then. In one episode, the middle school baseball coach was black - and turned out to be a war buddy of Jack. In another, Kevin had a young, black female English teacher who was so iconoclastic that she fully challenged the school administration by doing things that were still ruffling feathers in 1992 with just white people, much less 1972.

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Let’s be real. You’re not going to handle race in one or two episodes. If TWY had a race episode or two, it would be accused of having a token race character or marginalizing to one episode or whatever. Pretend the show wanted to explore the nuances of race in that suburban era. It would essentially require that to be some inseparable plot thread or theme of the show. That’s not what the show was about. Kevin’s perspective however insulated was based off of what a middle class white kid in the suburbs experienced in that time period.

Same thing with Mad Men. People complained race wasn’t more of an issue . The show did introduce race to a degree but it was ancillary at best - because that’s not what the show was about. It wasn’t written or conceived as a discourse on race. Someone like Don Draper would have rarely interacted with blacks socially, which is what the show accurately reflected. Demanding “more race” runs the risk that the show just deviates from its premise and foundation altogether.

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Let’s be real. You’re not going to handle race in one or two episodes. If TWY had a race episode or two, it would be accused of having a token race character or marginalizing to one episode or whatever. Pretend the show wanted to explore the nuances of race in that suburban era. It would essentially require that to be some inseparable plot thread or theme of the show. That’s not what the show was about. Kevin’s perspective however insulated was based off of what a middle class white kid in the suburbs experienced in that time period.

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These are fair observations.

I was thinking back to one episode - where Kevin is entering his first day of HS. The narrator says something about "there were new consciousnesses" to consider - and it shows 2 super huge afro guys walking towards him. They flash Kevin the black power fists and Kevin gives them a weak one back.

And they actually did have an episode where Kevin's teacher wrote a play for them to perform about racial injustice. Kevin played RFK. When I watched it recently, I actually noticed how it was kind of whitesplainy. You would have thought MLK (assassinated within the past year) would have been the main character. Instead, he was shuffled offstage and Kevin as RFK was the main focus. Just kind of weird.

Hard Pass

Considering that was a tough time to be black in America, I expect the show will be more drama than comedy. I’m not a fan of rebooting a show with just a race/gender switch, but at least this one is changing the time period.

It’s not as bad as some of the more obvious racial pandering that I’ve seen on television recently....making Jake from State Farm black and having just about every other couple depicted in commercials be interracial.

Does this qualify for Cultural Appropriation?

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It’s not as bad as some of the more obvious racial pandering that I’ve seen on television recently....making Jake from State Farm black and having just about every other couple depicted in commercials be interracial.

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Putting interracial couples in commercials isn't pandering, it's simply marketing.