Hey, everybody. There is a hot new blog on the scene. Thoughtful vivisection of television done by brianiac grad students, Tubatv is the half brainchild of devoted reader Thumbu Sammy, who this past week makes the rather astute observation that all four of the shows comprising NBC's comedy lineup last Thursday, The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock featured South Asian people. Yay for pop cultural presence! Boo for the fact that the South Asian people in question (pictured above)-- Aziz Ansari, Maulik Pancholy, and Mindy Kaling -- played characters named Tom, Jonathan, and Kelly respectively, just like that lady from Texas wants.Aziz Ansari, who has been a personal favorite of mine since occasional reader Sweet Daddy Purns introduced me to him in the summer of 2005 at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater (right before his killer "Aziz Ansari Punched a Wall" show), has always eschewed the rather limiting ethno-centric style of lesser comedians, but Tom Haverford? Desi, please...Still, I hesitate to condemn after one episode; he struck gold with his "I'm what you call a redneck" line in the otherwise mediocre pilot of Parks and Rec, but gets several demerits for the following statement, which while funny and self-undermining, does nothing to explain really why the fuck he can't be of Muslim heritage on TV: The cold hard fact is that dark-skinned people with funny-sounding Muslim names just don’t make it very far in politics...Yes, OK, fine, Barack Obama, Why does everyone always bring up Barack Obama?
2 comments:
god, i hope they didn't actually fire jonathan.
Thanks for the shout out, C4tS. I only hope we can reach the summits of your '08 presidential candidate-Wire posts.
I think Aziz will come around, by the way. But I'm not so sure about Parks and Rec. We'll see.
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