Line reversal!

I just noticed a strange reversal of lines between “Save the Best for Last, Part I” and “Interior Desecration:” In “Save” I Whitley says “Mrs. Byron Douglas the Third. Has a nice ring to it. Later in “Interior” Whitley says “Whitley Wayne. Doesn’t have a wing [ring] to it.” Just thought that was interesting.

Anyway here’s a quicky review of Love Taps: This episode tries to promote the evils of domestic violence, but instead makes stereotypes of the characters, especially Deon. “College Kid,” despite its strange and boring angle on the same topic, fleshes out the characters more.

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving.

“Prisoner of Love/Love Taps”

“Prisoner of Love”
This episode is much more amusing than Berenbeim’s fiasco “Mammy Dearest,” but still it’s a bit of a mess.
Let me start at the beginning–not of the episode, but the story behind it.
A reporter from God knows where (Victor Love) wants to do a report of college students’ attitudes to prisoners. He chooses Hillman College after he somehow recieves letters from Freddie, who (in one of Berenebeim’s stereotypical writing gestures) is a pen-pal to many inmates. He grabs some money and heads to Hillman. He lies to Freddie about being released and all that bullshit when she finally meets him and manages to secure a janitoral job (as well as temporary housing) through Ron (the writers’ whipping boy for what allegedly happens when you don’t go to college). Whitley trips over his bags while carrying groceries in Height Hall and manages to score a date with her. On their date, the reporter lies about reading the dictionary from front to back in jail (?) and not knowing how to eat an artichoke (okay, that may not be a lie here, but it could be one). But by the time their date goes on, most of the regulars know about the incognito reporter and fight over whether Whitley should be with him or not.
Later the characters try to help the reporter, under the name of Jamal, adjust to society (or so they think) in some strange-ass ways: Freddie gives him a self-help coloring book (another stereotypical gesture); Lena tells him about her father, who has been incarcerated; Whitley wants to see The Wild One, ride his Harley (which, as a broke-ass reporter, he doesn’t have), and get a tattoo (see quotes below) Ron and Dwayne discover that the reporter has money and race to Height. There the truth is revealed: that he’s a reporter, yada yada. Everyone feels violated, even when Dwayne tries to back Whitley. Of course Whitley dumps the reporter, much to Dwayne’s delight. Dwayne, of course, fails to get back in her panties.
The story had me reeling (as usual, since I usually hate Berenbeim’s work), but Jasmine Guy’s overacting in this episode just wins me over everytime, especially during this exchange:

Jamal: “…Uh, you ready?”
Whitley: “Yeah, let’s ride, daddy!”
J: “Uh, ride what?”
W: “Your Harley!”
J: “I don’t have a Harley.”
W: “Oh…Oh, never mind, we’ll take the Benz [remember she still has the
Mercedes-Benz her daddy bought her way before she came to Hillman]. I
thought we could stop by the tattoo parlor after the movie!”
J: “Uh, Whitley, I don’t think you want to go there.”
W: “Oh, no, no, no, you’re wrong. I want to experience life as you know it. What do you think about ‘Bad Mama,’ right
there (slaps upper left arm), upper arm? (Pretends to rev
up motorcycle) Vroom, vroom! Ah…”

And all this is done with Whitley wearing motorcycle gear (?). Yee!

“Great X-Pectations”
First of all, I think Jenifer Lewis is great in this episode.
Okay, we have a theme in the plot through the use of the ‘What do you think happened when Martin Luther King and Malcolm X met’ assignment. It’s an episode dealing with violence and non-violence.
The main plot concerns Terrell and Charmaine being late because some guys were trying to run her over because they were teasing her about her butt. Charmaine files charges with the police, but Terrell is so intent on carrying a gun around that he gets suspended. Terrell has to convince Dean Davenport (Lewis) that he wants to stay in school, but of course he has to lose the gun.
On to the subplots:

• The easiest one to talk about is Spencer wants to marry Kim again, and she refuses.
• Early in the episode, we find out that Whitley has eaten three sticky buns and is beginning to eat another one, claiming that she needs the sugar to keep up with her students. IMO I think it’s a reference to Whitley being pregnant, but she nor the people around her realize she is pregnant because later she’s shown dining near some rip-off Red Stripe beer (if you’re wondering why there’s Red Stripe beer in the scene, it’s because Michael Ralph’s Spencer is from Jamaica and somebody must have thought he drank Red Stripe, since it’s brewed there.
• A reference to “Cats in the Cradle” is mentioned when Dwayne talks about the people (see my “Cats” post) he could have killed.

Oh, what’s up with those ugly jackets? Yes, it’s a good plot device, but if Terrell doesn’t want to wear a dress jacket, let him not wear the jacket!

Overall, I like the premise of the episode–but I’m very confused about the butt-teasing thing. It doesn’t seem that big a deal to carry a gun over, let alone run over people for. In fact, in “College Kid,” Charmaine is teased about her butt again–and she never goes psycho over it. Geez!

“College Kid”
Contrived.

“Mammy Dearest”/”Cats in the Cradle”

My adapter’s broken. Again. So for the time being, these reviews will be pretty ugly (visually) and pretty damn brief until I get my adapter.

“Mammy Dearest”
After watching this travesty of an episode again, I realize that the (other) weakness in this episode is the bombardment of ideas and the lack of connection between them. Whitley decides to dictate to the others how to perform her ceremony. Whitley decides to (illogically) include mammy in her show and chastize Lena for not reading slave journals she should have been reading herself. Kim gets upset because despite a well-publicized article in Ebony magazine about Charnele Brown’s weight loss, she thinks she is a mammy. Mr. Gaines then supports an illogical basis on why mammy is important before standing up to Kim after Dwayne and Ron do some snaps. Cut to Lena somehow finding out about the dozens in one of the archivial books. Then (the best part of the episode) Kim quits Whitley’s monstrosity. Whitley meets up with Dwayne (this was mandatory) before discovering her family owned slaves. Then Whitley goes on a guilt trip for the sins of her “great-great-great granddaddy Jeremiah.” Gaines goes back to his first theories of mammy to make Kim, a victim of ignorant school officials calling her African princess outfit an aunt Jemima outfit, feel better (suggesting that Kim has always been overweight, but even this is a bit contrived). Finally Gaines helps Whitley get over her guilt trip and we have to endure a very factually inaccurate mock minstrel show/African dance segement (courtesy of Debbie Allen. If you ever wonder how her Oscar show dances must’ve felt like back in the day, look at this episode–you’ll know the reason why) where everything is magically healed except for Dwayne and Whitley’s relationship, which thankfully did heal (in a horrendous manner, but it did heal).
When I was watching this, none of these story elements did not seem to make sense to me–probably because the theme of race was too broad and was easily too solved by Berenbeim.

“Cats in the Cradle”
And the silver spoon, something something something and the man on the moon…
Okay, this is the episode where Ron, insta-bookie galore, bets money on a Hillman/Virginia A&M game (BTW, there is no A&M school in Virginia, just a buncha Yahoos, Turkeys, Pirates and two possibly corrupt religious right schools…and Sweet Briar University [for women!]) and then swindles three white dudes out of their money when he hears Hillman would win the football game because the A&M quarterback is sick. Okay, I take “three” back automatically–we all know Dean Cain is 1/4 Japanese (his last name before his mother remarried was Tanaka), so it’s two white dudes and a quarter-Japanese guy. Cain’s character, Eddie, and his equally racist buddy J.C. (the initials of…Jake Carpenter!), decide to put the word NIGGER in black spray paint on Ron’s already ugly Geo, the one that he supposedly lost because he refused to follow his father’s footsteps and become a car dealer. (Jake, played by Richard Murphy, is probably the most racially tolerant of the three, he’s just scared.) Unfortunately, they only get NI on the car. (Later somebody, possibly a stagehand, puts gger on the car.) A fight ensues between Dwayne, Ron and the two white dudes and a quarter-Japanese guy. They all end up in the stadium jail where the sitcom device of retelling a story in a character’s point of view is used…again. (One example of this is the Good Times episode where the Evans’ ugly couch is burned and we have to see the same story four different times in four different viewpoints until we find out that Penny burned the couch and subsequently put out the fire. In this ADW episode, you see the story once and two retellings, thank God. This is the only truly weak part of the script.) Of course, Ron, Dwayne, the two white dudes and a quarter-Japanese guy endure punishment from Ernie Sabella’s stadium-cop dude until the truth is revealed and J.C. the Stoned (hold on) and the quarter-Japanese dude have to paint buildings at Hillman…like Dwayne and Ron did in the first season.
The racial stereotypes are much more defined here than they were in that mess that should NOT had gotten Berenbeim a promotion “Mammy Dearest,” and the humor is much more memorable too: Whitley’s “Go Hillman, go Hillman” comment, the scalping joke (The role of the Native American scalper was played by G. Adam Gifford), the klepto A&M wolf mascot (Wayne Federman). Dawnn Lewis’ Star Spangled Banner is okay as well, but it’s a bit oversung (leading to J.C. the Stoned’s comment “I hate it when they (African-Americans) butcher the National Anthem”).
Overall the script is well written and the direction is wonderful–kudos to Gary H. Miller for writing this script and Peter Werner for directing. The one performance I didn’t like, however, was Carpenter’s–he sounds like he’s stoned, not intimidating, and I bet that if you had a five-year-old in the script of the show, the five-year-old could have beat J.C.’s ass. I also thought Ernie Sabella’s accent was a bit stong, but keep in mind his character did march with King in one of his Southern marches, so the accent could work in Virginia. And Jasmine Guy could have taken some pointers from Murphy–his Southern accent sounds so much more genuine for someone in Virginia than that destruction of a Georgian Southern accent she used for Whitley.

Next up: Prisoner of Love
Sadly, I cannot review “Bedroom at the Top” due to the lack of videotape I might have…I mean, I get paid tomorrow, I can buy a new one…

“Homie, Don’t You Know Me?”

After seeing “To Tell the Truth,” I have to admit I was a bit creeped out on how Whitley tried to make up with Dwayne before he told her he was seeing Lisa, especially when she was all up on him giving him chicken pecks on his neck. Made me sick…never mind.
Also, I never have understood why Whitley and Dwayne break up after he had one lousy date with Lisa. If Dwayne was sleeping with Lisa, I could understand, but they couldn’t work this issue out so we wouldn’t have those preachy episodes that followed “Do You Take This Woman?”
By the way, I like these episodes–they’re the strongest of the fifth season. They weren’t too goofy (well, “Woman” may have been a bit goofy, but hey, they didn’t rip off an ancient television tradtion like the evil twin sister like in “Lisa-Who-Little”) or too preachy. They were touching enough to make you care…then the show blew it with its many preachy episodes.

Before we get into a time-honored tradtion of fifth-season moralizing episodes, let me start with a sixth-season episode featuring a very special guest ya’ll should know as very dear to Jasmine Guy and Jada Pinkett Smith.

“Homie, Don’t You Know Me?” (1993, unaired on NBC)

NOT Starring: Darryl M. Bell, Cree Summer, Glynn Turman

Guest Starring: Tupac Shakur (Piccolo), Monica Calhoun (Yolanda), Shaun Baker (Champ) Bumper Robinson (Dorian Heywood), Patrick Y. Malone (Terrell Walker), Michael Ralph (Spencer Boyer)

Writer: Ron Moseley

Story: Kadeem Hardison and Moseley

Director: Hardison

Summary: Lena’s buddies from Baltimore Yolanda and Champ bring along unwanted guest and Lena’s ex-boyfriend Piccolo. While Piccolo annoys Lena by still wanting to get in Lena’s pants, Yolanda and Champ irk Terrell and Gina (respectively) by wanting to get with them and Charmaine because…well, she’s annoying. Dorian eventually gets in a fight with Piccolo only to still have Lena’s respect in the end. As for the other friends: Lena brushes them off because they don’t like her in college.

Comments: I swear, a lot of this episode just screams to me that some of the actors were in the episode because they were on contract. Case in point: Guy’s two “guest” appearances (where she gets dissed by Champ in the Pit and then where she whines about what you can’t do at Hillman later in Height Hall) and Brown’s appearance (in the Height Hall scene).

Lena’s friends try to come off as too damn street (except for Tupac, of course). They look like stereotypes instead of people you’re supposed to be afraid of. (Then again, the episode as well as the show’s appeal to younger viewers in the age the hoody of is dated). And as usual Bumper Robinson and Patrick Y. Malone cannot act their way out of a paper bag while Karen Malina White is shrill as Charmaine.

The moral also doesn’t work with me. It suggests that these kids acting tough on the streets are working “goverment jobs.” Not dealing drugs, not in the army, just working “goverment jobs.” Basically that’s the weakness in all of the Moseley/Hardison projects: their contrived image of youths of the 1990s that makes them look like stereotypes instead of real people–another image that prevails in “Love Taps.” All their episodes are geared to turn off the very audience the show seeked to turn on to the show (especially against the more hip-hop oriented Martin, which never berated its audience for trying to fit into a certain trend). I’ll probably point to the fact that Hardison was about 27 or 28 when this episode was being taped…but that just seems like a quick cop-out to suggest he was out of touch with kids 10 to 15 years his junior or he just really hated the hip-hop culture. Of course I’m not exactly saying that, but…

Next up: Mammy Dearest

Hypocrite!

Today I reconized that Whitley is a hypocrite (by writer error, of course).

In “Rule Number One,” Whitley demands of Lena to stop calling Dwayne, well, any variant of Dwayne except Mr. Wayne.

But yet, this is the same woman who, when asked to call Paul Paul in “The Power of the Pen,” did so (“Paul…my favorite apostle”).

Of course, if Hillman was real and I was a student observing this mess, I would call Whitley a bitch.

Then again I fear I will piss off the mighty Jasmine Guy, so I take that back immediately.

Southern Accents!

Learning a lot about Southern Accents today…

Earlier in the history of this blog I reported that Jasmine Guy used a Georgian Southern Accent to play Whitley.

Technically Whitley’s accent is known as a Deep Gulf Southern Accent, according to Accents: A Manual for Actors by Robert Blumenfield. This accent is heard in most of Georgia and North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

The accent Whitley needed: a East Coast Southern Accent, heard in Maryland, Virginia and coastal North Carolina and Georgia.