The problem with black T.V.

• Author: McKissack, Fredrick
• Position: Culture - Simplistic comedy TV portrayals - Column

If you want to know just how bad television can be, check out Homeboys in Outer Space.

Homeboys, which is shown on UPN, is the kind of television situation comedy that makes you wonder what the pitch meeting was like: "Let's send two funny black guys into outer space. It'll be like Star Trek meets Sanford and Son."

The show is more like Star Trek meets Amos 'n' Andy.

Homeboys in Outer Space stars Darryl Bell as Morris Clay and Flex as Ty Walker--a pair of ne'er-do-well, new-jack haulers of cargo in the twenty-third century. While Captains Kirk and Picard had the Enterprise and the Doctor had the TARDIS, our boys trek around the galaxy in the Hoopty, a twenty-third-century cross between low-rider and eighteen-wheeler.

Accompanying the homies in their wacky outer-space adventures is Loquatia (Rhonda Bennett), the ship's onboard computer. "This tart-tongued maven of the mainframe resents that she's confined to the console, shown only as a talking head on a monitor installed in the Hoopty's instrument panel," says a synopsis I read on UPN's web site. "In perpetual overdrive, she enjoys tormenting Ty with her caustic remarks and teasing Morris with her cybernetic feminine wiles."

Of course Loquatia resents being confined to the console. Given the producers' limited imaginations, Loquatia should do a Hal and deep-six these knuckleheads, then head off to join the Federation. At least in Picard's interpretation of the twenty-third century, women can actually captain ships (see Janeway on the Voyager).

Loquatia almost escaped once, when she was offered a chance to become a music-video star. In her absence, Ty Walker and Morris Clay install a new computer, also with a female persona, which promptly accuses the two of sexual harassment. A computer lawyer, who looks and acts like Johnnie Cochran, files a lawsuit against the homiest Loquatia comes back and saves the day. All is well.

Another episode has Morris and Ty delivering human cargo--cryogenized bodies from the late 1990s--to a sinister scientist who wants to sell body parts. But Morris and Ty don't know this until Morris realizes that his great, great, great, great, great grandmother is one of the frozen few and thaws her. Ty, who is a habitually horny but lovable firstmate, hits on Morris's newly young granny big-time. After some totally inane scenes that hark back to late 1970s television, Morris is able to send his grandmother back to the nineties.

The Hubbell telescope has led scientists to believe that the size of the known universe has been grossly underestimated. There are billions of stars in our galaxy alone, and millions of galaxies out there. Yet the best Hollywood can do for blacks is two 1990s b-boys in orbit. The writing lacks the depth of Sam Delaney and the wit of Douglas Adams. Homeboys in Outer Space is even more visually inept than a Doctor Who episode, although what it lacks in special effects Doctor Who makes up for in charm.

"When people look back at this decade, the 1990s, they will write that this was the decade of black mediocrity in the arts," says cultural critic and poet Kevin Powell. "Television, especially, but film and even literature, it's all pretty bad out there. Homeboys in Outer Space is just part of what's wrong."

"It's quite easy to see how it got on television," says Ken Perkins, television critic...