Do you ever think to yourself, “this show is okay, but why is everybody so not a giant gay black guy or a Korean immigrant, a secret ethnic (yes, you read that right), or a girl who spent 15 years trapped in a bunker deep underground?”
Well, I have just made your day, friend. Thank me later.
For serious, can I just say that I only realized this second that there are no straight white main characters in this entire show? They’re the sidekicks at best. It’s glorious.
I watched the entire first season in two days so that twitter wouldn’t spoil it for me. I suggest you do the same so we can talk about this show, which is perfect in basically every way. And I say basically because I bet they could make a better show, I just can’t conceive of it yet.
I binged the heck out of this show and love it.
Though isn’t Kimmy the protag and she’s straight and white? I guess given that she’s spent 15 of her most formative years underground, we can’t be sure she’s straight.
She does say “weird sex stuff” happened in the bunker. And at least she’s not a straight white dude. I don’t think there’s a TV show out right now that doesn’t have a straight dude lead or at white dude lead.
Are you watching Broad City? Because you should definitely be watching Broad City.
There are a few shows without straight dude leads (well…Looking, at least) or white dude leads–the main protagonists for Empire and How To Get Away With Murder are black women and their secondary male leads are also black, Jane the Virgin’s lead is Latina and her love interest is Latino, and Black-ish and Fresh Off The Boat have male leads who are POC. Scandal has a black female lead but her love interest is a straight white guy.
And then of course there are a good amount of shows with white female leads, but those do tend to have significant straight white male characters–Orange is the New Black might be one of the few exceptions to that rule, in that it has straight white dude characters but on a list of important characters they come in near the bottom. And weirdly Law and Order: SVU kind of makes that list now that Mariska Hargitay is the lead and the significant men on the show are Ice-T and Danny Pino.
Oh right. I even watch Fresh Off the Boat and Blackish. I tried to do Empire, but they’re all so hateful. Same with Looking. I’m afraid of How to Get Away with Murder for the same reasons.
I should try Broad City. I keep hearing good things.
How To Get Away With Murder is about soapy vaguely sociopathic idiots, but imo in a deeply entertaining way. Then again, I love Empire so, you know, I don’t know how much our tastes line up in that way. Even if I hated everything else (which I mostly don’t–the kids are little idiots, but largely in a lolzy way), though, Viola Davis a fucking powerhouse. And Cecily Tyson is her mom!
My deal is that at the end of the day, I’m exhausted. I just want heroes to save things and people to love each other. I can’t handle the stress of these dramas.