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In a challenging episode of 'All of Us,' Robert (left), played by Duane Martin, sits with his son, Bobby (Khamani Griffin) as he and his ex-wife, Neesee (LisaRaye McCoy) try to explain the impact of the 'N word'.
'All of Us' deals honestly with provocative topic of the 'N word'
By JILL VEJNOSKA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/24/2006
A mere tyke of 7, Khamani Griffin tonight delivers one of the bigger lines of dialogue on network television of late.
Barely five minutes into a new episode of "All of Us," the UPN sitcom created by Hollywood power couple Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, little Bobby James (Griffin) uses the "N word."
The whole word. The word I can't write in this newspaper, let alone ever imagine myself uttering in real life.
Shock is just one of the emotional players swirling about this provocative episode, which begins somewhat unpromisingly with a standard-issue sitcom plot: Bobby's parents, Robert and Neesee (Duane Martin and LisaRaye McCoy), pull out all the "pony rides are sooo yesterday" stops to throw him a memorable birthday party. But they end up with metaphorical cake all over their faces. First, the kids are more interested in the usual kid stuff than in the live camel wandering about the backyard.
Next, an innocent game of cards gets kicked up a couple of notches.
"Got any threes?" one little boy asks.
"Nope!" Bobby yelps triumphantly, unhatefully. "Go fish, [you-know-what]!"
That the first boy is white and Bobby black (and that neither knows what the word means, or its history) almost matters less than the reactions of the racially diverse grown-ups. They range from stunned silence to bemused acceptance to barely controlled outrage.
"Your boy shouts out the most consequential social insult in American history and we eat cake?" scolds Randall (guest star Keith David), an older family friend.
"C'mon, man, the boy's 8," Robert's perennially wisecracking young buddy, Dirk (Tony Rock), tries to smooth things over. "Let's keep it real."
You want real? Talk to Royale Watkins, who wrote the episode entitled "The N-Word." It was inspired by an incident where his own 6-year-old son asked him for permission to use the word, Watkins recalled by phone from California last week.
"After I picked myself up off the floor," said Watkins, who is black, "it made me go back to all the innocent times I had inadvertently exposed him to that word" through rap music or overheard conversations.
He related the incident to "All of Us" executive producer Jeff Strauss, who in turn repeated it to fellow producer Will Smith. The actor had expressed interest in directing an episode — "not just a comic episode, but one that was challenging emotionally," Strauss said in an interview. Enter Smith to make his directorial debut on "The N-Word."
There's a certain amount of subplot going on here as well. Three years ago, "All of Us" launched with more buzz than the usual UPN show, thanks to the Smiths' involvement. So far this season, it's ranked No. 172 among all network programs, but it's the fifth-highest-rated UPN series out of 15 (behind "America's Next Top Model" and the Golden Globe-nominated "Everybody Hates Chris").
But, with UPN and the WB merging into the CW network this fall, there'll be that much less room for new or returning shows on the combined schedule, to be announced next month.
"Nobody knows anything" about the show's prospects, Strauss said. Still, it can't hurt to have such a high-profile director and topic meet on-air at this crucial time.
With a few too-obvious punchlines, this "All of Us" isn't the best half-hour of television ever made. But it ranks right up there in terms of importance. Rather than reaching for a pat resolution, tonight's episode makes the "N-word" a stand-in for our complicated feelings about race. It puts it out there in all its conflicted, infuriating, funny forms and forces everyone to confront it.
So Randall wonders why Hispanics and Asians don't similarly "degrade" themselves verbally, and Dirk argues that blacks who use the word are reclaiming their power over an offensive slur. Robert frets that this divisive debate will do nothing but ruin a kids party (and by extension, his child's innocence). Mike, who's white and clearly uncomfortable, blurts out that his uncle used to date a black woman.
"I hate that word," Penny, who's also white, says forcefully. "As far as I'm concerned, it's never OK to say it."
Me, too. But then, I'm white. What do I know about it?
Not as much as I'd thought. But also a bit more now, thanks to "The N-Word."
All of which, believe it or not, brings us back to that network consolidation subplot. It's no secret that more black faces and topics show up on UPN than any of the other broadcast networks. While that's good for bringing us important episodes like "The N-Word" and for diversity in general, it's bad in the sense that all that and the best new sitcom to come along in several years — "Everybody Hates Chris" — get ignored by huge numbers of nonblack viewers who mistakenly think they won't be able to relate.
If folding UPN into the CW gets the "Chris"-es of the world the wider audience they so richly deserve, I'm all for it. But if, as some people fear, diversity gets overly "downsized," that's another n-word. Nuts.
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