Almost everyone I’ve mentioned “Deon Cole’s Black Box” to has responded with, “isn’t that another Tosh.0?” or “that’s just all about black culture, right?” or “oh, yeah, black Tosh.” And they could not be more wrong. I don’t blame people for getting that impression from the marketing TBS has put out, but if you’re blowing it off as “just another clip show” or “only for black people” you are missing out on some phenomenal comedy television.
If we’re going to draw comparisons, it’s a little bit “The Daily Show” with a dash of “Tosh.0” thrown in and whole lot of old-school “Conan” flavor. And, yes, it does slant a little “black” (whatever that means), but it’s not “trying to be black” (whatever that means).
Episode 4, which airs Monday at 10:30 pm EST, starts with Deon riffing on some recent news stories. The final story is about the recent dedication of a Frederick Douglass statue in Washington and devolves into a great sketch that references a 1970s Afro Sheen commercial. Deon does, in fact, goof on some popular internet videos, but that’s just a small part of the overall show. The internet videos and news clips are basically just there to serve as setups to Deon’s punchlines.
The show finishes with a pre-filmed sketch about Deon staging an intervention for the black IT guy who “talks white at work.” It’s a brilliant piece of parody, all at one skewering the notion of “authentic blackness,” black stereotypes of things white people like, and white stereotypes of what “sounds black.”
Not to get too lofty, but “Black Box” is very much a black comedy show for so-called post-racial America. It unselfconsciously uses “black” references without any fanfare. And rightly so, in a world where 12-year-old white kids argue about Biggie vs Tupac, NPR called Kanye West’s “Yeezus” a work of genius, and – oh yeah – that whole black President thing. However, they aren’t afraid to show they haven’t bought into the fiction that we’re all beyond racism now. But again, it doesn’t feel like they’re aiming for that particular place, it’s just the result of having more than the one token African-American on a writing staff whose only political and social agenda is, “what’s the funniest thing we could do here?”
So, if you haven’t checked out “Deon Cole’s Black Box,” now is the time. And if you have, were you surprised at what you saw?