Nearly 30 Years Later, ‘In Living Color’ Will Still School You On Humor and Black Joy

“All the honors go to the tragedian for chewing up the scenery, while the comedian, who has to be much more subtle to be funny, is just loudly criticized when he doesn’t come through”-Edmund Gwenn There are a few distinct things I remember about being a kid in the early 90’s. I remember being all about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, being grounded and having to wait a week before I could play a new game I got called Street Fighter II, and the fondest thing I remember was every night I’d sit and watch In Living Color with my family. The more I think about it now, the more I realize all the elements of Black culture and comedy I learned from this show. I was imitating the Oswald Bates and Blues singer, Calhoun Tubb, and other characters from the show, and I had them down pat. Delivery, timing, punchline — they became second nature as a viewer. Why a joke is funny, the structure of satire, parodies, and inside jokes were all made clearer to me through In Living Color. Off the bat, you have to take into account that the cast for season one is predominately Black as fuck. And when I say “predominately” I’m not talking 2 or 3 Black folk, or “we got a passing ethnically ambiguous person so we hit our quota for representation.” Nah, check out that cast — you got a squad that would have every god paying rent on Olympus shook if it were to come down to a roast session.

In Living Color’s season one line up was a squad full of killers before adding even more heavy a…