TV Avoids The Complexities Of True Interracial Romance

Quicker than you can get breakfast at Tiffany's, the next wave of show-biz chic is upon us: straight women and the gay men they love.

It began with the sprinkling of male homosexual characters in sitcoms like "Veronica's Closet." On the big screen, there was "My Best Friend's Wedding" and now "The Object of My Affection" with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd. This fall, NBC hopes to serve up "Will and Grace," about a woman and her gay best friend.

You can dope out why the entertainment industry adores this new deal; it delivers will-they-or-won't-they zing beneath the veneer of embracing differences. Viewers like it, too, for such stories transmit a sort of safe, secondhand tolerance.

Before we get caught up in Hollywood's plans for Dorothy and her buddies, however, let's look at a permutation that never quite got off the ground in TV Land - though it's been used to the same titillating purpose. I'm talking about interracial romance. Like the one that didn't happen Monday night on "Ally McBeal."

In a way, the nipped-in-the-bud relationship between Ally and Greg, the black doctor, was a fine Kodak moment for what's wrong with this show. Despite some excellent writing and a strong cast, the chief grip "Ally McBeal" has on its audience is the ability to tease us to pieces in an atmosphere of faux equality.

Up to a point, that's OK. We viewers must get our thrills where we can. So bring on the Kama Sutra cappuccino-drinking scene, the shared bathroom, the tiny skirts and the brainy shysters - in short, every slick contrivance known to tickle the tired yuppie. There's one of us born every minute, you know.

But the line should be drawn when it comes to deploying a character from a different background as plot bait. When Greg was written into the script as a sincere love interest for "Ally McBeal," viewers had every reason to expect the two to get together.

Instead, we got a scene where Ally and Greg kiss, she invites him upstairs to her place, he asks for a rain check. And wham! In the next scene, he's shipping out to a new job in Chicago. A total cop-out.

I had higher hopes for Fox, which more than any network has successfully mingled white, black and Latino characters on TV. However, signs that nobody wants to mess with portraying an interracial love affair were foreshadowed in "Getting Personal," the new Fox sitcom preceding Ally McBeal at 8:30.

Shortly into the show, Sam (white comedian Jon Cryer) says he's got a girl for buddy Milo (black comedian Duane Martin). Sam then extols the assets of Robyn (Vivica A. Fox).

"OK, OK," replies Milo. "But if it's such a great set-up, how come you don't go out with her yourself?"

That question gets sloughed off in the series. Last January at a press conference, the show's creators hemmed and hawed, and promised Cryer and Martin would date women of various backgrounds.

But a date's not a relationship. A relationship is what Tom and Helen Willis (Roxie Roker and Franklin Cover) had as TV's first racially mixed married couple on "The Jeffersons" back in 1975. It's what 1988's "In The Heat of The Night" delivered with police chief Bill Gillespie (Carroll O'Connor) and councilwoman Harriet DeLong (Denise Nicholas).

Yet even as America becomes a more ethnically and racially mixed society, the networks resist tackling this reality. I don't think the only reason is fear of inflaming separatists; I think it's more complicated.

Visibility's a big issue. People in television don't depict what they don't know exists. Look behind the industry cameras and you'll see why the Asian American presence in front of them is near zip.

Another obstacle is laziness. It takes hard work to craft a series that can handle race in a sharp, intelligent, entertaining fashion. Same goes for depicting gays, which is why the sympathetic and incredibly boring "Ellen" is a flop.

Still, it'd be nice to see somebody try to reflect what thousands of us see every day on the streets. Until then, TV should resist plot tokenism.

Kay McFadden can be reached at 206-382-8888 or at kmcfadden@seattletimes.com