When I first reviewed Chocolate News I said that the show suffered from some iffy taped segments, but that David Alan Grier’s commentaries showed potential if they could keep the humor more current. (At least I think I wrote that. Until the Internet coughs up the Tuned In blog archives I have to rely on memory, and/or making stuff up. I’m told they should be back by next week.)
Looking at last night’s episode, this is still more or less true. On the plus side, Grier’s opening monologue was much fresher than the hoary what-happened-to-rap rant in the premiere episode. Yes, the commentary—riffing on Barack Obama’s showing up the day after the election in a track suit—pretty much relied on a lot of racial-cultural stereotypes. But coming at them from the angle of anxiety that Obama, Mr. Post-Racial, might end up reinforcing those stereotypes anyway, it was pretty fresh and funny:
And did you really say you were going to build a basketball court at the White House? Well, why stop there? Why not play bones on the staircase? Why not dogfighting in the Rose Garden? … Come on, Barack! Your crew is strapped, you’ve got a private jet, and you get to drive around in a bulletproof Escalade with tinted windows. That ought to be enough for any black man!
What the writing doesn’t sell, Grier puts over with his preacherly mock-outrage. The field segments, though, still don’t offer much reason to stick around after the first five minutes. Part of the problem is simply conception: too many ideas, like the stardom of a morbidly obese African American hockey player, don’t even work at the pitch stage. Some is execution: a skit about Hollywood celebrities literally “losing” their adopted African babies after they get bigger (“All of a sudden it was like, ‘Omigod! There’s a black man in my kitchen!'”) was provocative but petered out. And they also may just suffer in comparison to the bits on The Daily Show and Colbert, which gain an edge from involving interviews with real subjects. Compared with that, this fake news seems that much faker.
So far, Chocolate News is succeeding only at keeping me watching Comedy Central after South Park until 10:35 or so. But that’s progress, right?