Arsenio and “Almost Human”: I Discuss Both at Racialicious and Entertainment Weekly!

Here is some big, BIG news! As you know, I’m writing for Racialicious on a semi-regular basis. My latest article is on the recent cancellation of The Arsenio Hall Show. Here’s a snippet:

Late night’s only black guy is gone once again. The Arsenio Hall Show, the recent iteration of the groundbreaking late night talk show hosted by Arsenio Hall between 1989 through 1994, has been cancelled. The cancellation of the show is bad enough, but even worse was the underhanded way in which Arsenio was let go.

CBS initially renewed the show for a second season. But then CBS decided to reverse their decision, cancelling it quite out of the blue. It’s undoubtedly a sad day for late night television, a virtual landscape which has not been kind to hosts of color.

George Lopez’s Lopez Tonight, which debuted in 2009 and saw the former ABC star become the first Mexican-American to host a late night English-language talk show in the U.S.was let go by TBS in 2011. Progressives were particularly upset when W. Kamau Bell’s Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, which featured real-but comedic-talk on today’s issues affecting America’s minorities, was moved from FX to FXX and eventually cancelled.

We can even go back to the 1956, when variety/late night show The Nat King Cole Show was eventually cancelled, mostly because he was kissing a white woman entertainer on television and, because of the “progressive” nature of the show—Cole was the first black person to host a show like this—national sponsors were hard to come by.

However, the impact of the show was something that affected many black Americans across the country. As NPR reporter Karen Grigsby Bates reported, “Except in the roles of slapstick comedians like Amos and Andy or sly house servants like Rochester and Beulah, ‘50s television wasn’t black and white—it was white period. So, given the scarcity of blacks on television until then, to have a black man without a chauffeur’s cap or a butler’s jacket smiling his way into America’s living rooms each week was a distinct culture shock.”

Read the rest of the article at Racialicious.

Also, if you loved reading my Almost Human recaps and hate that the show’s gone, guess what? I’m nostalgia-recapping the show for Entertainment Weekly! I’ve recently become one the Community writers for the website, and I’m glad to say that not only will I be revisiting Almost Human, but I’ll be recapping new show Tyrant as well. Look for those recaps starting Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

Here’s a snippet of my nostalgia recap:

…Rudy has been ordered to give Kennex a DRN, or “one of the crazy ones,” as Kennex put it. The “crazy” label comes from the fact that DRNs are basically humans you can plug into the wall. Rudy says that because the DRNs have a synthetic soul, they can feel and intuit just as much as humans can, if not more. They have breaking points, could make rash decisions, and do all sorts of things humans loathe about themselves. For those reasons, they were decommissioned and sent to NASA. Rudy states that due to the “problems” the DRNs exhibit, they are much more of a success than people want to admit.

Once Dorian is activated (by Kennex, no less), we have now entered the phase of the show that went from hardcore drama to a story of a man learning to love and care for someone again. For Kennex/Dorian shippers, this is the part where the relationship begins to write itself.

Read the rest at Entertainment Weekly!