The early 1990s was an unusual time for television. Black Americans started seeing more shows dealing with the Black Experience in the country, the first time this was happening since the mid 1970s into the early 1980s.
The reason this was occurring was as obvious as a Nielsen Ratings chart: the massive success of "The Cosby Show" was creating this effect, as the success of that program went through the roof for most of the 1990s and you should know, if something is working well on TV, every network wants in on that concept. That made room on the ABC schedule for "Where I Live."
The Huxtable family of "The Cosby Show" were decidedly upper-middle class... or maybe just upper class, living in their tony brownstone in a beautiful section of Brooklyn, with a doctor dad and a lawyer mom. Meanwhile, the St. Martin family of "Where I Live" is nowhere near that level: they were strictly working class, living in an apartment in Harlem.
Here's where we had an issue with how television functioned at the time and it clearly showed in how this show was set up. The story of "Where I Live" was supposedly based on actual things that happened to Doug E. Doug, a teen stand up comic in the early 90s. In talking about his family, Mr. Doug had a Jamaican father who had differing values and that clashed with the standard "American" ways of doing things Doug expected. On the show, this became Doug's issues with his Trinidadian dad and mom, played by Sullivan Walker and Lorraine Toussaint, respectively. Most of the comedy in the series was based on the parent/child clashes those characters continually had.
Here's the point: most all of the creatives on the program, producers, writers, showrunners, were white. Even the show's theme music was composed by a white musician. Now, I'm not saying that you couldn't do a valuable, meaningful and entertaining series this way, but the problem comes when you compare it to what seems real, or at least plausible, when it came to stories. And even though the setting for the show was Harlem, the tone of the program felt like any of the sitcoms that populated ABC's "TGIF" lineup at the time.
It's never up to the actors to make changes or demand rewrites of the material. The job of the actor is to simply perform the script to the best of their ability. So I can't blame Doug E. Doug for any of this. But this exposes an issue that television has had for decades and still continues to have, when it comes to having the power to create and produce a network program.
When you have a writers' room, the question is, who is in it? Who is there to discuss what works, what seems real, what is offensive, what shouldn't be said? We know this is a problem for Hollywood because it's been a slow go when it comes to getting black writers, black producers and black creators to make these series, and because there have been complaints and even takedowns of elements in series, based on the tone deafness that occurs when people who aren't directly connected to what the storyline of a show is about, are responsible for presenting it to the millions watching, who know better.
And I'm not saying this show was specifically offensive in any way, just that it didn't distinguish itself enough to make a lasting impression for most viewers and I think that was due to the people creating the series.
Part of the reason the show had any success at all was that Bill Cosby stepped in and advocated for it at the time, and that got things moving in a better direction. Cosby became a consultant on the program, which made the show work better in its second season.
Of course, "Where I Live" wasn't intended to be a "teachable moment" for an audience of mostly kids, as ABC's "TGIF" was designed to be "family oriented" material. But in a way, that's exactly what it should have been. Rather than trying to fit this series into the standard one-liner, insult comedy, kids-know-more-than-their-parents style humor that eventually spread throughout the programs of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel a few years later, this could have been both funny and educational and dealt with how parents saw the world and why they made the choices and set the rules the way they did. You could still have had Doug and his pals out carousing around the neighborhood, but when his parents chided him for the actions, they could have explained how and why that mattered, in a way that didn't sound like a lecture, and still kept the lighthearted feeling as a part.
But that's why "The Cosby Show" worked where many others did not - it never dissolved into stereotypes, it continually checked itself for how real the storylines seemed, they actually had Black writers and consultants as a part of the creative team and they refused to talk down to the audience at any time. Treating the viewer as having some intelligence is generally a good idea.
Still, this show did have some worthwhile moments even through all of the rough patches, and it helped align Doug E. Doug with Bill Cosby, a connection that would have an impact on his career, later.
