Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 9, 1990 TAG: 9006090517
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN J. O'CONNOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
And that is clearly what Keenen Ivory Wayans is trying to do as the executive producer, writer and star of "In Living Color," a weekly explosion of energy and exuberant sass on the Fox Broadcasting schedule.
(The half-hour show can be seen at 9:30 p.m. Sundays on WJPR-Channel 21 in the Roanoke viewing area.)
In terms of style and content, the colors are primary.
Subtlety is decidedly a sometime thing in this neighborhood.
Wayans, surrounded by a first-rate repertory company that includes his brothers, Damon and Shawn, and his sister, Kim, takes comedic aim at just about any icon on the contemporary pop scene.
His sense of humor veers toward amiable irreverence, the kind that infused "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," a film parody of 1970s "blaxploitation" movies, for which Wayans was also executive producer, writer and star.
He is a talent on a roll, part of the expanding constellation of young black entertainer-entrepreneurs that includes Eddie Murphy, Robert Townsend and Spike Lee.
So far, "In Living Color" remains a series in search of a sharper focus. Too many skits turn out to be not nearly as clever as they obviously seemed on paper. Some are little more than one-line jokes stretched to the breaking point. Others simply dribble on aimlessly.
It's not very difficult to sense some of the behind-the-scenes wars that are undoubtedly being waged about content and the extent of permissiveness regarding language and sensitive subjects.
Doing what you want to do still has its limits on commercial television.
The good news is "In Living Color" is getting better.
One recent program, for example, had a segment called "Great American Profiles" with a very young Don King peacefully settling a schoolyard fight with the realization that "I think I can make a buck doing this."
A sitcom called "Hey Mon!" featured a West Indian family, all the members of which had six or more jobs ("You can't tell whether they're happy or mad - they're just working").
"Ted Turner's Very Colorized Classics" offered "Casablanca" with Billy Dee Williams telling the blind pianist, "Yo, Stevie, play it again." And two gay critics on a public-access cable channel laid their double-entendres on a series of book classics.
Like Murphy, Wayans could be singled out as a prime candidate for some consciousness raising, especially when it comes to women and gay men.
The two cable critics, called Blaine Edward and Antoine Merriweather (Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier), are mincing stereotypes who seem wholly unaware of the age of AIDS. Their potential to give offense is certainly enormous. Yet they have become two of the more likable regular characters on the show. There is no venom here in the manner of an Andrew Dice Clay.
"In Living Color" also features five dancers who, in lively hip-hop fashion, provide the segues into most sketches and commercial breaks. Wayans refers to them as "my Fly Girls," and the young women, decked out in the latest street fashions, are strictly ornamental, much like the June Taylor Dancers on the old "Jackie Gleason Show" and the "Ed Sullivan Show."
Times have a way of not changing at all.
In fact, "In Living Color" has, beneath its hip veneer, a disconcerting habit of turning surprisingly old-fashioned.
In one sketch, a white customer at a black-owned diner says, "I'm a vegetarian." "Oh," says the unfazed owner, "I'm a Capricorn."
Who says vaudeville is dead?
But these are details. The significance of "In Living Color" is its black sensibility.
The ensemble company - which also includes Jim Carrey, Kelly Coffield, Kim Coles, Tommy Davidson and T'Keyah "Crystal" Keymah - is integrated, but Keenen Ivory Wayans is the man in control, filtering the show through his own perceptions.
Many of the targets are predictable: a boyishly fawning Arsenio Hall, an incongruously simpering Mike Tyson ("I'm really ecstatic to be here") or a voracious Oprah Winfrey ("What would you do if the man you were living with for five years got weak at the knees every time you mentioned the word `marriage'?")
Political overtones are rare.
One sketch had a little girl calling for the release of all political prisoners, including "the great Nelson Mandela and the great James Brown."
That was the exception. It probably shouldn't be that much of an exception.
For the most part, the show seems content to stick with friendly spoofing. Doing a takeoff on a familiar perfume commercial, a black man murmurs seductively, "If livin' with Oppression is a sin, then I'se be guilty."
A television series called "Lean on Me, Beautiful" offers an educator called Joe Clark running a beauty academy with a baseball bat.
With a vantage point new for prime time, "In Living Color" is one of the freshest new shows of the year.
Now it's just a matter of getting a bit more bite into its material. Wayans is not a man to be underestimated.
by CNB