It’s framed as romantic and warm, perhaps even innocent. Two episodes later in “Homecoming,” a flashback dedicated to the crew’s college years, we watch Ari’s first gay kiss. There’s no less scandal to it than any of the numerous straight hookups shown on the show. It’s treated as common as the time of day. Now here are Tia and Rocky, and they’re leaving nothing to the imagination. I’ve racked my brain and I cannot think of a single other time when I’ve seen two women share a bed on their network. BET has a common phrase they use in their advertising, “We Got You,” but the truth is that they haven’t always had the backs of their black LGBT audience. It’s been weeks and I still can’t get that particular episode out of my head. As the girls rush off to save their friend in need, Rocky agrees to be their ride – after Tia promises to finish where they left off later, of course.
There’s nothing aghast about it, in fact Simone just rolls her eyes and continues to talk about the emergency of the day (a family friend has found herself in lock up after a drunk yelling match with her boyfriend). Rocky’s clad in a grey undershirt, Tia’s making out on top of her in her t-shirt and panties, when Simone busts through the door. In the fourth episode (“Call A Spade”), Tia’s girlfriend, Rocky, a stud black lesbian, is introduced to the audience mid-hookup with Tia. When the audience learns of Ari’s bisexuality in the second episode, it’s dealt with in a funny text message conversation with Simone that involves Ari boasting over his most recent hookup. This approach works particularly well for Tia and Ari, both of whom have their sexuality dealt with upfront and with zero-to-no fanfare. Still, there is something refreshing about the writers’ room that Waithe has assembled for Boomerang they don’t mind leaving room to ride the air of quiet humanity in between the show’s beats. The original film Boomerang based itself off the frenetic energy of its lead comedian, Eddie Murphy. Not that I have something against eccentric, pushy, or over the top comedies! Television shows like 30 Rock, which always rushed to its next joke even at the sake of its own plot, or Brooklyn 99, where common catch phrases (“Noice!”) rule the day, have a well deserved place in sitcom platform of the last decade. Joke payoffs come from intimately knowing the perspective of the person speaking, rather than anything madcap. Over the course of it’s first seven episodes Boomerang has taken its time with the history and development of each character, eschewing the typical frantic comic beats of a mainstream sitcom for a more subtle and lived-in humor that echoes Waithe’s signature writing style in her Emmy Award winning episode of Master of None.
#BOOMERANG BET MOVIE#
The crew of 20something best friends at the sitcom’s core include upper middle class and wealthy black characters Simone and Bryson (whose parents are the central characters in the original Boomerang movie that the BET sitcom is spun-off of) there’s also working class characters like Tia and Ari, Tia works as a dancer at a strip club and Ari hustled odd jobs – including being a bouncer at a gay club – to support himself as the first in his family to go to college David and Crystal, college sweethearts who are now divorced in their mid-20s, are people of faith David is the pastor of his own storefront church.
#BOOMERANG BET FULL#
Not only has Boomerang proven itself to be one of the most cutting edge black voices on television, it’s also invested in showcasing a full spectrum of young blackness, including sexuality. In the last few weeks my expectations have been more than exceeded.
#BOOMERANG BET PROFESSIONAL#
I hoped that, given Lena Waithe’s professional reputation and the fact that Boomerang came out the gate with two black queer characters (Tia, a lesbian, and Ari, one of the few black bisexual men on television) in its main cast, this show could help move the needle.
#BOOMERANG BET TV#
When the sitcom premiered in February, I detailed the black pop culture and TV field that it was joining – one where critics’ darling black trans and queer television productions like Pose were still not getting the awards recognition it deserved from organizations like the NAACP, where black LGBT millennial voices were still being erased en masse out of our own cultural productions. This time? The word went from black to rainbow, and just like that I already knew – we were off really to the races. Last week on BET, Boomerang began its episode the same way it’s begun each episode that’s come before: With the title in simple, bold print over a blank screen. The Autostraddle Encyclopedia of Lesbian Cinema.LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.
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