So last week I was fortunate enough to attend the FYC event (FYC standing for For Your Consideration, which is the moniker they give the Emmy campaigning season) for the Peacock show “Killing It.”
I’d never seen or heard of the show before, so I went into it with absolutely no expectations…Well, I guess that’s not completely true. You see, when I haven’t seen or heard of something before, my default expectation setting is pretty low. But ultimately, I didn’t care one way or the other; I can sit through damn near anything for an hour or so when there’s free food waiting at the end. I’m disciplined like that.
Speaking of the free food waiting at the end, can I just say kudos to NBC Universal (Peacock’s parent company) for the NBCFYC House? They really did the damn thing. I’ve only been to about seven FYC events so far, but of the seven this one for “Killing It” was the best in terms of ambiance and atmosphere – those words might mean the same thing, but it’s late at night and I don’t feel like looking them up, so there. Though I have to admit that the Apple TV+ one was my favorite so far because I got to meet the writers. Because when you want to be a working writer, there’s nothing better than getting a chance to ask questions of working writers.
The “Killing It” FYC event was definitely a vibe, though. I loved the venue – it’s like it had layers to it. Each area we went into had a different look and feel. When you first enter it was like a lounge where they were serving glasses of wine and lattes made to order from Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen. They also had Haribo snake gummies, and little coconut candy snacks. I even saw a Chucky doll sticking out of a locker which I thought was so cute.
From there you go down a couple halls to the screening room, where you could help yourself to boxed water and lightly-spiced plantain chips. I’m not even a fan of plantain chips, but these were delicious. Too bad I didn’t snack on them before I left that room. If only I would have known how tasty they were, I would’ve stashed more in my purse.
After the screening, we were directed up to the rooftop where the reception was held. Let me tell you, it was just gorgeous. It was a bit nostalgic for me. It reminded me of when I used to live in New York and worked at MarthaStewart.com. Our offices were on the top two floors of a 12-story building…maybe it was 11 stories, I can’t remember, but anyway they’d have parties up there. Sometimes, I would go up on my breaks as well, just stare out at the Hudson, look up at the other buildings way taller that one I was on and simply marvel at being there, marvel at being in New York – a little respite at work from work.
Now I was in LA, my hometown, having a similar experience on a rooftop overlooking the Capital Records building I used to pass by going up and down the 405 as a child. I don’t know, it’s just little things like that that bring me joy.
But anyways, on to what I thought of the show. There were things that I liked about “Killing It” and things I didn’t. I’ll start with the things I didn’t like because, well, I just like to.
I think there were portions of the show that were too serious to be offered up for laughs. In one scene you have Craig Robinson’s character, who is also named Craig, being denied a loan by a patronizing boss who says some very stereotypical things about black people. That motif is used several times in the show – white men denying Craig a loan, and talking about black people in racists ways.
Interestingly enough, those scenes got big laughs. Sitting in that audience of mixed-company (a term some black people use to indicate being in the presence of both black and non-black people, non-black usually meaning white), I felt some type of way when the crowd broke out in boisterous laughter. I couldn’t bring myself to do the same.
Don’t get me wrong, I realize there are advantages to using comedy to tackle heavy subjects. I know it has the power to make really uncomfortable subjects more digestible. It can also enable people who probably would have completely ignored the topic to actually ingest it instead of avoid it. However, on the flip side, the jokes can also decrease the gravity of the subject matter, and leave the impression that these very serious issues are something that can be overcome if you simply learn to laugh off things that are no laughing matter.
I can assure you that those of us who have been on the receiving end of denied home loans, or raises, or promotions and have been stereotyped know that there’s nothing funny about it. And I think too that sometimes some of us can laugh about it because we like to think that these discriminatory practices are more associated with days of old. Or we think that it only happens to uneducated blacks, or blacks with a criminal history and the like. Especially since now we’ve had a black president and we have people like Oprah, and Tyler Perry and that billionaire who paid of the student loan debt for Morehouse’s graduating class in 2020. It’s this whole idea that it’s a class issue not a race issue. Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t be okay. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not true.
Just this year, Bloomberg reported that blacks were being rejected for mortgage loans by Wells Fargo even while being well qualified. What’s more, blacks with higher incomes were getting rejected more than whites with lower incomes. A few years ago I remember reading an article about a LA Rams player who was rejected from renting a home in Irvine near where his team practices. I believe he and his wife had a credit score of over 800. The reason they were given for the rejection? Someone else had a credit score four points higher.
I’ve personally never applied for a home loan, but something similar happened to me before when I interviewed for a job. The interview seemed to have gone fine. The interviewer asked a lot of questions and interacted with me well. She was hard to read though – I had no clue which way it was going to go. After I didn’t hear back from her in a while, I decided to call and follow up. When I talked to her, she told me they went with another candidate who had more experience than I did. Then interestingly enough she started naming the experience that this person had, and it was experience literally right off of my resume, that’s how reckless she was. I didn’t even bring it to her attention, because at that point, it wasn’t even worth it, just dually devastating.
And the thing is, you don’t have to use straight comedy to tell a story. There are ways to meld the comedic with the dramatic effectively so that the heavy stuff is not so heavy-hitting that you can’t still get a laugh somewhere else in the movie or show. Take, for instance, the following examples…
Two movies I believe do a good job this are “The Five Heartbeats” and “Love Jones.”
First of all, I just have to say that “The Five Heartbeats” is one of my favorite movies of all time. I think it is a masterclass in storytelling. The way Robert Townsend was able to handle the overarching story, include these little subplots, and make it all flow was just brilliant.
But anyway, there’s a scene in the movie where the group gets pulled over by the police while driving at night. The next thing you know, they’re all out of the car with their hands on the hood. They tell the police they are a singing group, and mockingly, the police tell them to sing something. They have a song – a pretty upbeat song – called “I’ve Got Nothin’ but Love For You Babe.” However, this version we hear, at the officer’s command, is a very somber one. In the next scene, the guys are back in the car on the road again. Everyone in the car is completely silent, dejected. The only one heard is Robert Townsend’s character, Duck, who slowly sings “America the Beautiful.” This was a brilliant choice, because the words he sings contradicts the experience he just had.
“Love Jones” also has a good example of how to treat social issues that require a more serious tone. The reason I think the scene I’m about to describe is such a good example is because “Love Jones” is a love story, it’s not even about race. Yet and still, it recognizes that race is such a key fixture in the lives of black Americans, that it doesn’t want to leave this aspect of our experience out.
In the scene Nina, who is black, is being interviewed by a white man. As he peruses her photography portfolio, he begins to criticize it by saying the photos need to be slicker. When she questions him, instead of elaborating on how the photos could be improved, he condescendingly goes on to give her a grammar lesson about the word “slicker” before rejecting her.
The great thing about this scene is that this experience is not specific to black people. People of every race have undoubtedly come in contact with an interviewer who’s belittled them, or a boss or a coworker. In that sense, the scene has a universal quality to it. You don’t have to have experienced racism to know that there’s something wrong here. However, if you are black and have had this kind of interview with someone of a different race, given the history of this country and the world for that matter, it’s a high probability that you think that person is not just rude, but they’re also racist. Though this scene is small and seemingly subtle, it sends a quick, yet powerful message about some of the indignities blacks encounter on a regular basis.
Though “The Five Heartbeats” example is more closely associated with explicit racism, in both cases race was never mentioned outright, but rather demonstrated by the belittling of black people by white people. It’s the overall tone of the scenes, and the reaction of those wronged that tells the story.
Now that I’ve given you two movie examples, let me give you a couple in television where race is treated with the seriousness it deserves. First up, an episode of “The Jeffersons” comes to mind where a white racist man becomes sick and George Jefferson, a black man, gives him CPR. The racist man’s son has a change of heart regarding his racist ways after his father is saved by George. However, at the end of the episode, the father – upon learning that it was George who saved him – tells his son he should have let him die…or something to that effect; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that episode. The point is, “The Jeffersons” was a sit-com, not a drama. That means, there was no way they were going to take on a serious topic without also making people laugh. Even though there were jokes throughout, the episode ended on a heavier note, which conveys the seriousness of the problem. And, like “Killing It,” “The Jeffersons” was a series, so they always had the option to lighten up the tone in the next episode.
Another good example comes from a show produced by Peacock’s parent company NBC back in the late 80s, early 90s: “A Different World.” This show, by the way, is one of my all-time favorites – I still watch it to this day. There was an episode where Dwayne and Ron, both black, get into a feud with some white guys who went to a rival school. Next thing you know, one of the white guys begins spray-painting the word nigger on Ron’s car. He only gets the N-I out, I believe, before they break into a physical fight which lands them all in jail.
The episode got even more intense, for me, when they were all in the same jail cell and a heated exchange ensued. Both sides had strong words, yet they were able to temper the heaviness of that scene with some lighthearted jokes by others in the cell like the school mascot still in costume. Once released, they all end up back in the parking lot where they seem to have squashed the issue only to find someone else had completed the unfinished graffiti on Ron’s car, spelling out the word nigger in full.
So again, this is another sit-com with the ultimate purpose of making you laugh, yet they still found a way to tackle the serious issue of racism without sacrificing laughs. And, like the episode from “The Jeffersons,” this one also ended on a heavier note, thus conveying the message that this is an ongoing problem that needs to be displayed as such.
Each of these examples I presented – both from movies and TV, whether racism was addressed explicitly or inferred – all set a tone that the circumstances these characters found themselves in were to be taken seriously by the viewer. That’s the missing element “Killing It.” It lacked the proper tone. It’s tone-deaf. The show never condemns the racism it depicts, it just makes fun of it. The show uses the same comedic tone for its racist depictions as it does when Craig meets his cooky Australian Uber driver and battles a snake in the backseat of her car. The comedic tone was never adjusted from the silly to the serious. To the contrary, the serious was made out to be silly.
The way Killing It handled these issues was reminiscent of how they were handled in the 90s movies “Don’t Be a Menace in South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood” and “Bulworth.” Both of these movies used comedy almost as a sedative for deeper messages about race, stereotypes, discrimination and similar social issues. I can’t lie though, I like both of these movies. Yet even back then I wondered why they were taking on such serious issues using comedy that teetered on buffoonery. Even back then I thought there was a better way.
Another thing that I didn’t like about the show is how the father was seemingly reduced to being a nobody simply because he didn’t make a lot of money. Here is a man who died, while trying to teach his little bad asses (see, I know how to make a joke) not to steal. So it was disheartening for me to see that his adult sons thought of him as someone who didn’t make something of himself. He may not have been rich based on what we see of him, but he was principled. And I didn’t like that his children totally ignored that aspect of him to focus on his net worth.
But, at the end of the day, that’s art. And the fact of the matter is they can do whatever they want with their show. Far be it from me to say that you can or should never use comedy to depict serious issues. I’m just going to have my opinion about it, and my opinion, in this case, in a nutshell is it was irresponsible. But I’ve only seen the first episode so, who knows.
Overall, I have to admit I thought the show was indeed engaging. After they made light of the scene with Craig and his racist boss, I really wanted to tune the show out, yet try as I may, my attention never wavered – I kept waiting to see what was going to happen next.
I thought it was a fresh idea – the whole snake hunting thing – part of the reason for the name of the show, “Killing It” I’m assuming. I like that they gave him an unconventional way of making money, when the conventional ones weren’t working.
I also liked that that his ex-wife is deaf and there is no big deal or explanation made for it, she just is. She’s also Latina, which is nice representation for the Hispanic community of Florida where the show is set. However, I think it would have been nice if they used a black Latina in this role, because when do you see that? Especially if they had someone who looks like me, instead of someone who looks mixed. The same goes for the little girl that plays his daughter. It would have been nice to see a little girl who looks more like Craig and his 4C hair, because how often do you see little black girls with hair like that on these shows? So many of them seem to have straighten hair, or wavy hair. I’d love to see some kinky, coily hair. That’s not to say that these light-skinned, straight and wavy-haired people shouldn’t be on TV. We need to see them too. I’d just like a bit more balance.
But again, I’ve only seen the first episode, so who knows what the others bring. I must admit, I want to find out.
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