One of the things that works best for me about House of Lies is something that’s coming up in subsequent episodes: its intense bluntness about race and the racism that persists at the highest levels of corporate America. And it was exciting to hear Don Cheadle, who plays high-powered consultant Marty Kaan, and Glynn Turman, who plays his father Jeremiah, talk about the show’s racial politics—and to promise more explorations of those themes if they’re lucky enough to get a second season.

“I want to commend the producers, showtime, for taking on the elephant in the room. This show addresses racial situation like no other show,” Glynn Turman said at the House of Lies panel during Showtime’s presentations at the Television Critics Association press tour today. “From the very opening scene, it’s smack dab in your face. It has never been presented so up front in the history of television. This is a bold step in treating a black man like a person with dimensions…The reason you know it is he is the guy he’s playing. That’s a racial attack. That’s an attack on racism in order to bring the walls down in itself. So at every turn, this show is addressing something that is a taboo.”

And he’s right. Reverse racebending happens occasionally, but it’s hard to imagine another show that would take a book written by a white guy about skulduggery in the world of business and cast a black man in the lead role, and do it without comment.

But it’s not simply a matter of making Kaan black instead of white. This wasn’t so much an issue in the first episode, but the show is very blunt about demonstrating racism and calling it out. Among the things coming down the pike: a client mistaking every white member of Marty’s team for Marty before turning to the black man in the room, and a very honest conversation between Marty and an African-American recruit. I asked Cheadle about whether we need humor that exposes racism more than we need the gentle humor of reconciliation.

“I think the best way, sometimes to deal with things of that nature that have so much gravitas is to come at it sideways,” he told me, saying that making people laugh can open up conversations that might not be possible otherwise. “If you can find a comedic way in, it’s more difficult to do and it’s dangerous to because the subject matter is so fraught with perils and traps. But you can sometimes make even more headway than if you confront it head on.”

And in the scrum afterwards I asked him what it was like playing a role that—in his capacity as father to Roscoe, who may be questioning his gender identity and his sexual orientation— both pushes back against images of woman-headed African-American households and the idea that black communities are homophobic, one of the more unfortunate and difficult political memes of the last few years.

“It’s a real unconventional take on all of those sorts of tropes,” he told me. “Is even there another show on television with a black male lead? Anywhere? The fact that it even exists and the fact that we get to deal with things in the way we get to deal with them…is a new take, which is crazy in 2012, but it’s kind of a new take on all of that stuff…There’s a moment in one of the episodes where [Roscoe] comes to me and says ‘what do you do when you like a boy and a girl?’ And I’m like ‘I don’t know.’ Marty doesn’t know how to deal with it. He’s not sure what to do. I think if he didn’t have his father in his ear saying’ let him do what he wants to do, he’ll figure it out, he needs room to individuate,’ if he wasn’t giving him all that Jungian psychobabble, he’d be like, ‘like the girl.’…he’s just tying to understand and roll with the punches.”

No one show is going to roll back decades of reluctance to give black characters leading roles in movies and television shows. But Marty, Jeremiah, and Roscoe Kaan are all roles that feel like they’ve been delivered to us from a promising future.

So, Are You There, Chelsea? is not a good television program. It’s yet another show that mistakes raunchiness for meaningful displays of individuality. It saddles Dot-Marie Jones with a deeply embarrassing side gig as a butch lesbian Chelsea (Laura Prepon) meets in prison. The wig Chelsea Handler wears to play Sloane, Chelsea’s sister (of whom Handler said earlier, “everything I’ve been accusing her of my whole life I can now reenact before her eyes”) is deeply unfortunate.

But especially after a fall of awful Asian stereotypes on 2 Broke Girls, I actually thought the one OK spot on Are You There, Chelsea? was Chelsea’s best friend and roommate, Olivia (Ali Wong), who happens to be Korean but doesn’t appear to be solely defined by her ethnic background. Sure, she makes jokes about her ethnicity, but they’re a means of allowing her to defined what role being Korean plays in her life, not of other people defining her by her Koreanness. Olivia snarks about her clothes smelling like kimchi from living at home. And when she and Chelsea talk about Olivia’s striving even though the only jobs available to her as an aspiring journalist are unpaid internships, Olivia deadpans “It’s the American dream. You people made it up.” When Chelsea explains how she and Olivia meant, her memories are of Olivia protecting her from a bully in a nice reversal of passive Asian stereotypes.

Is she perfect? Nah. I don’t really need to hear her ask their new roommate “You’re a virgin? Everywhere?” or talk about how the African-American gentleman she runs into the elevator is the source of her current ladyboner. But that’s part and parcel of the show’s trying-too-hardness, rather than big flaws in her character.

Parks and Recreation comes back tonight*, and to celebrate, I’ve got something special! I talked to Nick Offerman at the NBC party about Ron Swanson, feminism, libertarianism, and an upcoming episode of the show he wrote that happens to deal with all those gender issues.

There’s an ongoing conversation about whether manliness is on the run in American pop culture, and I feel like I always end up holding Ron as proof it’s not true. How do you think he fits into current trends in masculinity on television?

Well, I also have felt a dearth in manliness over the years that I’ve been in the business. Men, action heroes have shaved chests now. There’s been a real sort of denuding of the man’s man. And I feel like maybe that’s why people are responding well to Ron because he’s the plumber that we all know and love. The guy who goes back one too many times at Thanksgiving to load up his plate.

But Ron also likes strong women. Do you think the character suggests that there’s no contradiction between being masculinity and feminism?

Well, yeah. There’s an episode coming up that I actually wrote that kind of touches on that. With modern feminism, we’re sort of seeing the backlash of feminism where all these powerful women are in charge of things and they’re saying, “Oh wait a second, these emasculated guys are not nearly as handy as we were at running a household, so now I’ve got to take care of the kids and be an executive.” And you know, I think Ron, also speaks to that issue because he despises weak women in the exact same way he despises weak men.

So the show’s calling for a gender truce.

Absolutely. The show and Ron, I think, declare that everyone should be allowed to just do their thing and we can all get along and get kissed once in a while.

I live and work in Washington, and I have libertarian friends so I love seeing a libertarian represented on television. Where do you think Ron fits in to the political spectrum?

Well, it’s a good question. I think Ron is a little too cartoony to fit into the real political spectrum. There’s way too much gray area in any political affiliation in modern America. And I think if Ron were really a living, breathing American, he wouldn’t have any time for American politics. He’d probably end up in a cabin in Montana with his guns and just wanting to be left alone, and not wanting to hear about, not wanting to be bothered to have to think about the political race every four years.

But Ron’s libertarianism also seems undercut by Leslie’s competence and enthusiasm. Do you think Americans would be more enthusiastic about government if they saw more out of it?

I suppose. I think the message is that, and it’s one that we could all really use, that being a good neighbor should come before your politics. No matter how you feel about fiscal issues, you should still be willing to lend a hand so we can all exist in a community and have a happy life.

*My recap will be up tomorrow, though a bit late: I’m seeing Veep and Game Change tonight, so I’ll have to catch the episode after the HBO panels in the morning.

At Showtime’s panel for Shameless this morning, John Wells (who gets his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today) suggested that the aperture of network television has narrowed such that he wouldn’t be able to sell some of his most popular shows today.

“It took us a long time to sell West Wing and it would be increasingly impossible now. You would take it to cable,” he said, suggesting that he also wouldn’t have been able to get China Beach on the air. “We never would have been able to sell ER…I can tell you that even at the time it was turned down by all the major broadcast networks twice before we actually got NBC to make it.” But he suggested that the combination of a return to profitability and the rise of smart, sophisticated storytelling on cable might pry the doors open again. “I’m hopeful about the network business,” he said. “They’re starting to see the competition for high-end programming, programming that’s going to be watched by a more sophisticated and affluent audience, that they have to compete with cable. I find it to be a very good time to have ideas that are different.”

He also suggested that even if the Supreme Court declined to overturn the rules against indecency on network television, the key to pushing the boundaries was to provide clear context and emotional basis for both events and language, pointing to ER as an example.

“We spent a lot of time intentionally pushing against where we knew the fence to be because we knew the audience was ready for more than what the government was prepared for us to do,” Wells said. “The audience is always very prepared to accept something that is done within the context…It was an episode I wrote and directed in which Anthony Edwards was dying and fell out of bed and started screaming ‘Shit!’ because he was so frustrated with where he was in his life…We didn’t get a single letter because the context, people understood.” In a different philosophy than that laid out by CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler and 2 Broke Girls executive producer Michael Patrick King yesterday, Wells questioned indecency for indecency’s sake. “Is the audience going to understand what we’re trying to get at, or are we trying to inflame or do the thing that you do in elementary school where you wave around words and try to get a reaction?” he asked.

Wells also spent some time discussing the role of Ian Gallagher, the young gay character on Showtime who is not just romantically, but sexually active. He said that Cameron Monaghan’s turning 18 meant that Shameless would be able to be somewhat more explicit about Ian’s sex life without having to worry about violating federal child pornography laws. And Wells said he’d been touched by how the story had resonated with young gay teenagers who told him and Monaghan that they appreciated how the show reflects the complexity of their lives. Especially given the role of Roscoe on Showtime, it will be interesting to see if the network is digging in as a grittier alternative to shows like Glee, which focus more on the emotional lives of teenagers than the details of their sex lives. That’s not to say that you’ve got to be explicit to explore emotion, but it’s true that sometimes the details of sexual experience (or of exploring gender identity) do create specific emotional reactions, and it’s nice to have a commitment to exploring that.

By Rowan Kaiser

I must admit that I have some wariness about talking about the better female characters of the past for the purposes of laying the groundwork for female characters to compete with the masculine anti-heroes who dominated discussion of “quality television.” It’s not that I don’t want there to be more, better women in important roles on television, but instead that I don’t think female characters have lagged all that far behind men on the best shows of recent years.

However, I do think that the way we define “quality television” indicates a bias that leads towards critics thinking that those masculinity-examining shows are the best. They’re all serious dramas, they’re all on cable, and they’re all (with the exception, perhaps, of The Sopranos) in more traditionally acceptable genres. If we expand out definition of quality to include shows with strong comic elements, shows that aired on networks or netlets, and shows occur in less highbrow settings, things look a lot different. Generally speaking, we can many more fantastic, quality televisions series that feature stronger women than The Wire, etc. Specifically, that criteria opens the door for Veronica Mars to be considered one of the great series of television.

After all, Veronica Mars aired on UPN, a network not historically known for its critical acclaim. It balanced drama with humor, with plenty of quipping as well as some ridiculous premises. And it was about a private investigator who worked in a high school, navigating social strata and relationship drama. It’s also one of the most intelligent shows I’ve ever seen, with one of the strongest protagonists, male or female, in television history.

Three things make Veronica Mars a stellar character: she’s strong enough to be respected, she’s vulnerable enough to be human, and she’s played marvelously by Kristen Bell. Certainly, the show’s writing and supporting cast add to it, but it’s Veronica’s show, even beyond what you might expect from her name adorning the title.
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The bridge is yours.

-Tim Tebow: powered by elves.

-Poor, sad Ben Stein.

-Teaching Fight Club.

-I am also pretty excited about these sci-fi and fantasy movies.

-Branding AIDS.

-I just really love listening to Jay-Z rap about how much he loves the women in his family:

I sat in on a bit of Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Cougar Town co-creator Kevin Biegel, and I’m particularly intrigued by the idea that what the small, scrappy shows are doing to fight for audiences will be what everyone has to do in the future:

TV now doesn’t just exist from the writers room to the television. People like to be engaged. People like to know that you care about them caring. I really believe that…If I can do these little events and people actually respond to it and feel like they’re getting something special, I think that’s awesome. And I don’t understand why other TV shows don’t do this. And I literally think – I don’t care if I get in trouble; fuck it – there’s a laziness on the part of a lot of TV writers, where they think, “My job is just to write the show and produce the show and that’s it.” Bill and I are on the same page: “Fuck that. That’s not true. Your job now is to go out there and sell the show and tell the fans how much you appreciate them.” Because one little spark – like Katniss in “Catching Fire,” book 2 – can really start a whole big thing…What’s the alternative? I sit on my own in the writers room and the show goes away? That’s so lame! That’s so defeatist! That’s so 1980s, “Okay, we’ll just write a shitty sitcom, and people will like that.” Fuck that! That’s not the world anymore.

In the ABC executive session yesterday, Paul Lee joked that he loves Cougar Town‘s Bill Lawrence because he’s a “pirate,” when it comes to roguishly and independently promoting his shows and “I used to be a pirate when I was a showrunner and now I’m the Navy.” I think the interesting question will be whether all shows, hits and scrappy underdogs alike, have to do this, or whether the willingness of creative folks like Lawrence, and Biegel, and Dan Harmon on Community to fight for their shows mean networks will simply be willing to do less work to support them.

I’m super-excited to be judging the quarterfinal round of this year’s Tournament of Books at The Morning News. For those of you who haven’t done it before, 16 critics read through 16 of the top books published in the previous year, and they advance through the brackets in concert with the NCAA season. So if you’re looking for a good read, check out State of Wonder, The Sisters Brothers, Swamplandia!, The Cat’s Table, The Marriage Plot, Green Girl, The Art of Fielding, or Open City. Their fates will be in my hands!

By Tyler Lewis

George Lucas on the importance of Red Tails’ success:

“I realize that by accident I’ve now put the black film community at risk (with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions). I’m saying, if this doesn’t work, there’s a good chance you’ll stay where you are for quite a while. It’ll be harder for you guys to break out of that (lower-budget) mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let’s make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there.”

I understand what Lucas is saying here, but I really think people put too much pressure on films like Red Tails and Bridesmaids to magically change the way Hollywood does business.

Every time a movie about black people or white women comes along and makes a lot of money, black people and white women get all excited and think that finally things will change. It happened with Sex and the City…and again with Bridesmaids. And it happened in 2005 when Diary of a Mad Black Woman was a “surprise” hit. Needless to say, seven years later a Perry film is pretty much the only film for (for the most part), by, and about black people that gets made. For black women, it’s worse: People haven’t heralded a movie for sisters since Waiting To Exhale.

Real talk: I ain’t putting the future of my representation in the hands of George Lucas. Y’all remember Jar Jar, right?

Oh, I get it. It’s a sexy headline, of course. But I’ve seen far more articles online about this quote than I see commentary about the need for Tyler Perry to use his studio to give other black filmmakers, writers, and actors an opportunity or Oprah Winfrey to do the same with OWN – the two people who could actually do what Lucas is doing. In fact, let’s have this conversation when Perry or Winfrey finances on their own someone else’s vision and puts it out like Lucas.

We are so easily duped into having the wrong conversations or framing success and progress in ways that actually hurt us. The conversation about minority filmmaking has got to switch to redefining what a successful black, white woman or black woman, or even gay film means. Given our relative populations, should $100 million really be the threshold for success?

I’m reminded of the wisdom of Anthony Mackie:

In my mind, Mackie’s comments are the rallying cry. Not the likely success of Red Tails.