Three Ways to Make 'The Carmichael Show' More Carolinian

Note: Since I started working on this post North Carolina has entered center stage of the transgender rights debate.  Naturally these events have slightly influenced the final product.  If you get a chance to see last year's The Carmichael Show episode on the issue I highly recommend it.

With only six episodes in its first season NBC's The Carmichael Show has already become a hit with critics and garnered enough viewers to land a second season with twelve episodes that premiered earlier in March.  At risk of jinxing it, one can't help but compare this success with Seinfeld which launched with a five episode freshman year, returned with twelve before becoming a decade defining cultural phenomenon on NBC.  For many viewers it is also as representative of New York City as any Woody Allen movie and without trying too hard to do so like How I Met Your Mother.  One of the reasons The Carmichael Show has become a favorite of mine (along with the bold, uncompromisingly compromising approach to hot button issues, fantastic performances and wonderful jokes) is that it is set in North Carolina, the home state I share with the show's creator Jerrod Carmichael.  So far in the second season Jerrod's fictional mother has mentioned the capital Raleigh as the site of her hypothetical affair and Panthers quarterback Cam Newton has been sighted twice by characters off-screen at retail stores.  However, if The Carmichael Show is going to represent North Carolina the way Seinfeld represent New York I have a few suggestions.

Cheerwine

That's an Avett Brother referring to Cheerwine

North Carolina is kind of a major player in the history of soda (we call it soda by the way).  Pepsi was invented in New Bern, NC in 1893.  About twenty years later another beverage was created that doesn't have quite the same amount of outreach.  For the most part Cheerwine is almost exclusively available in North Carolina.  This cherry flavored, rich red hued refreshment with the weight of a cool breeze is a staple of pig pickin's and local sporting events.  Let me rephrase that.  This sugary, fruity, colorful nectar, which could just as easily be the official beverage of the LGBTQ community as the people who apparently hate and fear them, is a common sight at social gatherings.  Nothing would confirm The Carmichael Show's setting like the characters drinking from a chilled burgundy can.

An Uneasy Loyalty to the Tobacco Industry

This is from Bull Durham

North Carolina was largely built by tobacco.  It's only rival as the state's main export is cotton and of the two only tobacco is the most deadly plant outside of the evil sentient tree known as Croatoan who ate the entire colony of Roanoke.  Durham is especially reliant on tobacco, earning the Bull City another nickname, Cancer Capital of the Galaxy.  In recent decades humanity has accepted that cigarettes and the ilk are deadly and anyone who uses them does so knowing full well that it could be the thing that kills them.  Of course many places in the United States, particularly the South, have dark spots in their history; slavery, Jim Crow, and now rampant homo/transphobia for instance but so few of those are currently economic necessitates that kill people every day.  Although, that still might not be as bad as forcing the glamorous Laverne Cox to use a filthy men's bathroom, assuming she ever graced the Tar Heel State with her presence.  An episode about a character's struggle to quit smoking would be an easy fit for The Carmichael Show.  If anything it would be too similar to the episode about David Alan Grier's Joe and his adherence to a poor diet in spite of his failing health.

Andy Griffith

I don't recognize either of these people

You can't talk about television and North Carolina without talking about The Andy Griffith Show.  It's easily the most famous depiction of the Old North State.  With his folksy charm and sly grin Griffith's sheriff Andy Taylor and the fictional town of Mayberry captivated the nation of the 1960's.  Griffith quickly became North Carolina's chief unofficial emissary, a role he filled to perfection up until his death in 2012.  For over half a century Andy Griffith and Mayberry's colorful cast of characters have been an omnipresent force throughout the state.  Actually, Griffith's legacy can be seen in the pilot of The Carmichael Show and Jerrod Carmichael might not even realize it.  Despite his kindness and unlimited country wisdom, Andy Taylor could often be quite manipulative, like a benevolent trickster god from a folk tale.  Likewise, Jerrod's character spends most of the pilot steering the conversation to avoid the topic of his girlfriend moving in with him.  It's a trait that hasn't been seen much since that first episode but could easily make a return.  Failing that, Jerrod's brother Bobby would make an excellent sheriff.  All he would need is North Carolina's beloved moral compass, the question "what would Andy Taylor do?"  The answer is rarely if ever "let misguided fear and bigotry conquer over compassion."

The First Annual _Thony Awards

The year is over and a new year has begun.  Now it's time to look back at 2015 and celebrate excellence as defined by some guy.  It's not like I'm much less qualified or objective than any of the magazines or award shows or whoever is deciding what's best around this time.  (Sure, Rolling Stone, "Can't Feel My Face" is the best song of the year.  That sounds about right.  Teens will totally think you're relevant now.)  So I'm sending out the year the only way I know how, with dumb lists.

Best New TV Shows

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

30 Rock left quite an impression but its creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock managed to follow it up spectacularly.  Their show about a young woman newly released from an apocalyptic cultists' bunker immediately proved to be more than just a gimmick with a ridiculously catchy theme song.  It has the sharpest, smartest jokes in the business told to perfection by Ellie Kemper's Kimmy, her new roommate Titus, and their landlord and Kimmy's boss played by Carol Kane and Jane Krakowski respectively.

The Carmichael Show

The Carmichael Show wasn't promoted as a successor to the work of TV legend Norman Lear but the similarities were apparent from the first episode and the results are spectacular.  Not since Lear's heyday of All in The Family and The Jeffersons has a comedy this good so deftly confronted social issues while honestly attempting to offer a variety of grounded viewpoints.  It certainly helps that some of those viewpoints are represented by terrific actors like David Alan Grier and Loretta Devine.

Mr. Robot

I usually have a pretty good idea of what's going on in the TV world but somehow Mr. Robot snuck up on me.  I just happened to see a commercial after the show had already aired three episodes.  I had the same reaction I imagine everyone has when first exposed to Mr. Robot.  "That looks pretty good.  It seems a little out of USA's wheelhouse.  Hey, is that Christian Slater?"  We were right on all three counts, if a little understated.  The show about a troubled young hacker turned revolutionist proved to be very good, very out of its channel's wheelhouse, and that certainly was Christian Slater at his Christian Slater-est.

Best TV Shows

The Leftovers

The best part of The Leftovers is that it makes no sense.  No one knows what's happening but you know how the characters feel about it and that they feel it hard.  The central concept is that 2% of the Earth's population vanished instantaneously for no discernible reason.  Everyone else just has to continue living their lives knowing that they're all subject to the whims of a random universe whether they allow themselves to see it or not.  In the second season the central characters, namely the Garvey family, move from Mapleton, New York to Jarden, Texas, a town that was entirely spared from the "Sudden Departure."  Because of its good fortune Jarden is actually affected more than anywhere else.  In their search for security the Garvey's wind up in a world even stranger and more compelling than the one they left behind.

Game of Thrones

Of the many staggeringly cinematic shows that make up "The Golden Age of Television,"  Game of Thrones is the most breathtaking.  Every episode has at least one moment that is so tremendous it seems too good to be true.  In some ways it is.  Game of Thrones is easily the most expensive show currently on TV and one of the most expensive of all time.  It faces another problem in that it is moving too fast for the source material to keep up.  This year the show moved farther away from the books it is based on than ever and only time will tell how that will pay off but so far it hasn't been too bad.  Books or no books, we can rest easy knowing there will always be dragons, sex, and violence on Game of Thrones.

Billy on the Street

It's hard to say what is the greatest testament to the strangeness of New York: the giant with a microphone running around yelling at people about pop culture or the fact that he ever finds people willing to play along.  Either way, the real stars are the normal people with appropriately flabbergasted responses.  Billy Eichner represents an entertainment obsessed generation with too much stimuli and not enough leftover free time to express their excess of opinions about it all.  He's a hero to the kind of youth who complain about television being too good.  He has absorbed too much all at once so he directs it at others who are faced with the same challenge and the only reasonable response is "Oh my god!"

Best Movies

Mad Max: Fury Road

Every post-apocalyptic wasteland since 1979 owes something to the Mad Max franchise.  They're beautiful, well acted films full of fiery car chases, but ironically the first couple move a little slow for a modern audience.  That's not a problem with the latest entry.  It retains the Western themes and imagery of the originals but Silver never moved at this pace.  Fury Road is an amped up cokehead fever dream with terrifically stoic performances from Tom Hardy, replacing Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, and Charlize Theron as the appropriately named Furiosa as well as Nicholas Hoult as one of the villain's devotees.  What's more, it looks magnificent and the script is fantastic.  Every single piece works perfectly to create a well oiled machine.

Creed

Sylvester Stallone has been trying for decades to get the Rocky series back to its artistic, Oscar winning roots.  It turns out all he had to do was hand the reigns over to a new generation of hungry young artists.  Director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan introduced the world to Adonis, the son of Rocky Balboa's rival turned ally Apollo Creed.  In many ways Adonis' story is similar to Rocky's.  He's a nobody fighter until Apollo Creed posthumously pushes him into the limelight and gets him a chance at the title.  But where Rocky was largely about the Italian-American experience of the 70's Creed is about being black in the 10's.  Coogler's direction is fantastic and Jordan proves that despite a speed bump this year he's still one of Hollywood's most talented young stars.  Like the man said, "life's not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

Ex Machina

In an age when having 6 Fast 6 Furious on your resume gets you a job directing Star Trek it's nice to know that there's still a place for smart science fiction.  Ex Machina has no aspirations of blockbusting but instead offers subtlety and nuance in a story of isolation and humanity in our modern technological times.  Coincidentally, two thirds of the main cast also appears in Star Wars: The Force Awakens which is quite a credit to their range.  All three of Ex Machina's leads, two humans and an android, are wonderfully grounded and tender as they face their own irrelevance in a rapidly progressing world.

Best Comic Book Series

Uncanny/All-New X-Men

Marvel's top gun writer Brian Michael Bendis had a great year.  Two different shows based on his work premiered for streaming.  However, he's a comic book writer first and foremost and this year he finished his monumental run on the sibling X-Men books Uncanny and All-New.  The stories of mutants young and old, the architects and insurrectionists, came to a close in spectacular fashion.  Scott Summers' revolution especially had a grandly tragic climax with a wonderfully optimistic denouement.  Nothing happened and it was beautiful.

Batman

Whatever your feelings on comic book deaths are, few teams could handle the(a) death of Batman better than writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo.  In the four years since the New 52 reboot Snyder and Capullo's Batman has been one of the most consistent books in the DC Comics line-up.  Since Batman apparently met his end at the hands of The Joker late last year, Commissioner Jim Gordon has been struggling to find his footing as a new kind of crusader.  Meanwhile at a humble youth center , Bruce Wayne has been building a new life without any memory of the old one.

Spider-Gwen

A world where Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker switch roles sounds too gimicky to be interesting but writer Jason Latour and artist Robbi Rodriguez took the opportunity to create a fresh and exciting look at the Spider-Man mythos.  Spider-Gwen's Marvel Universe is a punk rock world full of garage bands and graffiti artists.  Latour's scripts are strange, funny, and affecting and pair perfectly with Rodriguez's radiantly raucous art.

Best Albums

To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar

Any music fan will tell you Kendrick Lamar is one of the best young artists alive if not some kind of hip hop messiah.  To Pimp A Butterfly is his greatest album yet, complete with everything that makes the genre great.  Lamar's poignant poetry wends over the rocky seas of the jazzy/funky music.  Even the most pop song on the album, "i," has a beautiful undercurrent of pain.  The album aims high but it's perfectly accessible, which is quite an asset for one of the most important works of music of the decade.

Tell Me I'm Pretty by Cage the Elephant

Maybe I'm a little biased.  Cage the Elephant has been my favorite band since I was 16.  However, I've never shied away from admitting when my favorite things fall short of expectations and in seven years Cage the Elephant has never disappointed.  This time, by teaming up with producer/Black Key Dan Auerbach they've struck gold.  Tell Me I'm Pretty is the most polished CtE has ever been, only to allow the listener to more precisely hear their rowdy energy.

California Nights by Best Coast

Best Coast have been making their name in the alt-rock world for about as long as Cage the Elephant but I never quite got the appeal.  With California Nights they've broken through and created my favorite album of the year.  The vocals are more melodic and the guitars are heavier.  Together they create a crystal clear sound that's less beachy and more anthemic.  No matter where you are or how you listen, when California Nights is playing it rumbles from the walls divinely.

Also

Wasn't gay marriage legalized in the U.S. this year?  That's pretty cool, right?  Feels like that's not a big enough part of everyone's "year in review" stuff.  So many people fought for that for so long.  As long as we're looking back at the year that seems like something worth celebrating.

Please for the Love of All Things Good and Holy Renew 'The Carmichael Show'

Speaking of combing the past and the present, TV networks have been trying to revive the traditional single-camera filmed-in-front-of-a-live-studio-audience sitcom for years.  It's been a rough ride, with a lot of misfires.  Finally, NBC has gotten it right and it might already be over.  The only six episodes of the first season of The Carmichael Show aired over three weeks at the end of summer and there is currently no word of a renewal.  That's not nearly enough time for it to realize more than a fraction of its immense potential.

The series' namesake is the excellent stand-up Jerrod Carmichael.  Jerrod had an impressive 2014, with a significant role as frat guy Garf in Neighbors and especially with his HBO special, where he casually mused about politics and social issues.  He brought that same relevance to The Carmichael Show and more.  Out of the entire history of television the most obvious influence on Carmichael is the iconic 70's hit All in the Family.  Both shows confront the issues of their times with as much bluntness as is possible with a 30 minute comedy between and surrounding the lives and times of a family with a variety of different viewpoints.

In the pilot Jerrod, playing himself, avoids telling his parents that his girlfriend has moved in with him by declaring that he might be Republican.  He spends the rest of the episode stirring the pot as the heat rises between his conservative Christian mother, very liberal girlfriend, and unpredictable father.

  

In the tradition of sitcoms starring a stand-up comic, the show's namesake is far from the best actor in the cast.  Jerrod certainly has a lanky charm as he smiles like a Cheshire cat, but like Seinfeld and Raymond before him, he is outmatched by his supporting cast.  Amber Stevens West plays Jerrod's biracial, agnostic, idealistic millennial girlfriend Maxine with delightful nervous energy.  Jerrod's wacky brother Bobby is played by Lil Rel Howery, another up and coming comic who isn't quite at home on screen but no one could attempt to say "sex musk" funnier.  Bobby's equally absurd ex-wife Nekeisha is played by Tiffany Haddish who is much more comfortable in her skin.  Jerrod and Bobby's parents obviously have the most experience of the cast and it shows.  Loretta Devine plays their mother Cynthia with a sing song, high pitched voice like a not-grating Edith Bunker.  David Alan Grier plays Joe Carmichael in what could be the comeback I didn't know I desperately needed from him.

The other five episodes don't pull any more punches than the pilot, except for maybe the one titled "Kale."  All of the characters continue to have their own distinct, relatable viewpoints and you can never be sure who will be on who's side or how long they will stay there.  The second episode, which aired immediately after the first, centers around a Black Lives Matter protest (the series takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Jonathan Ferrell was shot and killed in 2013, not far from Jerrod's hometown of Winston-Salem).  Cynthia and Maxine bond thanks to the former's experience during the civil rights movement and they leave for the protest while skeptics Jerrod and Joe stay behind.  Jerrod believes that protesting is futile and Joe thinks it's too rash, they use their time together to discuss their personal encounters with race and the police, realizing they're more emotionally invested in the issue than they want to admit.  

The next episode leaves the headlines relatively unripped to focus on health, then the fourth deals with LGBTQ.  The show breezes past gay acceptance with everyone on the same page because there's not really a good argument to be had against it, then moves on to transgender.  There's no good argument against that either, but at least it's more divisive and topical.  The fifth episode is about religion, allowing the technically Jewish but mostly just spiritual Maxine to play the outsider even more than usual.   The sixth episode is about guns.  It's a little too predictable to be as shocking as it would like to be, but the story is a little more complex than the others, making a good step in the right direction.

The biggest difference between The Carmichael Show and All in the Family is that the latter wasn't afraid to sit in an uncomfortable moment long enough for the entire audience to feel it.  Sometimes it was downright hard to watch but, of course, impossible to look away from.  The Carmichael Show moves a little faster, but that could be a strength.  The comedic momentum is steady so there's barely enough time for the audience to realize how much their beliefs are being challenged.

I'm not saying The Carmichael Show is as good as All in the Family, I'm just saying that six episodes isn't enough to tell.  It's not enough to cover all of the issues in modern society and it's not enough for the young cast to grow into their roles.  It's not enough to perfect the balance of pathos and humor and it's not enough for the David Alan Grier comeback I only just realized I desperately need to take hold.  All the television in the world isn't going to solve the world's problems but someone needs to have the conversation.  Sure, there's no shortage of pundits yelling at each other from across the airways or satirists not even trying to appear unpretentious, but The Carmichael Show is the only place on TV to see real people talking about the world around them.  The 70's saw over 200 episodes of Archie Bunker calling Rob Reiner Meathead. The modern age deserves at least a full second season of Jerrod Carmichael doing whatever it is he will do.

All six episodes of The Carmichael Show are currently available for free on Hulu.  Please watch them.