I BROKE UP WITH MY GIRLFRIENDS

Yeah I know I am a little late with this but Girlfriends is cancelled. Oh My God, the Network made the ballsy decision to cut the Negro Show and say it was mostly due to the WRITERS STRIKE. I hear you, I mean all those other sitcoms were just fortunate to have that little extra to stay afloat and make another season at it. I hear you, it was a “HARD” decision to make with all those other shows you have on the line up. I guess the viewers should be fortunate that it make the cut from UPN to CW. I mean, 9 years is something to be honored, especially as a Black Television show or even a Black ensemble series (a record in television circles) and even more so, an honored show (Nominated for Prime time Emmy. Another 7 wins & 35 nominations) at best (THANK YOU KELSEY GRAMMER aka Frasier).

As you all know, I take to research before I go on the repeat and spread gossip as News but here I get this all up in my eyes:

We hear from a source within the "Girlfriends" writing camp that the CW has decided to cancel the series immediately instead of bringing it back for a ninth season.

While no official announcement had been made as of press time, we were told the CW will not even film this season's remaining nine episodes that were suspended during the writer's strike.

Ironically, news of the show's cancellation comes just as the strike has ended and the writing staff was preparing to return to work. We were informed by one of the writers yesterday that Monday night's one-hour block of new episodes served as the show's last.

"Girlfriends" became the longest-running live-action comedy series currently on network television with the debut of its current season in October 2007. The writers strike suspended production after only 13 of 22 ordered episodes were completed.

The series, created by Mara Brock-Akil, was consistently the No. 1 show in black households since its Sept. 11, 2000 debut. Original cast members Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Brooks, Persia White and Jill Marie Jones starred as a group of close friends dealing with life and love in Los Angeles. Jones left the series in at the end of Season 6. – EURweb Feb. 12, 2008

WHY IMMEDIATELY? This makes me suspect. I will admit, in the beginning it took me a minute to warm up to the Sistah’s Show (that’s what I call it because it was kinda WEST COAST GHETTO) but I grew up in a house full of girls and in each one of those heifers; Joan Clayton, Lynn Searcy, Maya Wilkes, Toni Childs and the fifth Girlfriend William Dent, all represented at least one of my sisters. I think, like the Huxtables from the Cosby Show, we all had someone in our family that we could relate to, which was and still is part of the success of shows like Girlfriends. Granted, this was a "BLACK" sitcom and most of its honors reflected that, none the less, it was the number one watched Black Show on television for 9 years straight.

I guess my favorite and unfortunately moderately short-lived was Toni Childs, played by Jill Marie Jones. Her leaving once the show transitioned from UPN (Urban Peoples Network) to the CW (Colored What?), the rumors of contract renewals, money issues and story lines became true. Still, she was my character and the one I think I’d love to hate the most …. Toni Childs was DRAMA, more quality drama than Joan who in my right mind I would never want to be LOCKED in a room with … can you say ISSUES. But regardless of your views of the characters, they were all family, Black Families, Black Friends, they where the people in my family, my sisters growing up.

While in Chicago I had the pleasure of meeting Reginald C. Hayes. NICE GUY. He not only was approachable but he is/was humble for the work he received on Girlfriends. That in itself was a reason to respect the work on the show. My ear to the acting world has told me that everyone on the show shared the same sense of the pride and dignity and that energy displayed and put out reflecting the inspiration that the entire cast and crew wanted to portray.

Thinking back, this was reminiscent of another ensemble cast of Black Women, Livin' Single on the FOX network back in 1993. Originally Livin’ Single was to be a mid-season filler, the show lasted for 5 seasons being at that time, the longest Black ensemble show to date. More Afrocentric than Girlfriends, it was Ghetto East Coast and rough around the edges but soon found it stride and became the blue print for young successful urban youth and young families. What I enjoyed most between the two shows was that although both were centered on the successes of Black (women) progress, both captured a detail struggles of Black identity, pride, independence, mainstream, assimilation, beauty, spirit, history and economics within communities on the SMALL SCREEN. Call it a toned down version of the Cosby Show, you can not dismiss the fact that what Bill Cosby had accomplished in terms of Black Images on television with his brand of family open an acceptable door for Livin’ Single (Urban Realness) and Girlfriends (Jack and Jill Realities).

There may have been other shows, ensembles that all shared the same formulas of the four aspects of Womanhood; Age, Sex, Intelligence, Humor, but none spoke deeper to the Black community as Livin’ Single or more so than Girlfriends. Take The Golden Girls, which became a CLASSIC even before it was in re-runs. You have Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia; these names are ingrained in television lore, were the bright and safe journey to retirement telling a fearful world that it is OK to get Old. And over the years, with the lessons and laughs learned from watching there women, that once you find your first grey hair, pluck it, look at it in wonderment, and then laugh your ass off because now you can officially, "SAY WHATEVER I WANT CAUSE I EARNED THE RIGHT TO BE OLD, BEAUTIFUL AND BOLD". I have caught many of Black folk (Brothas as well) sneaking and watching these Grandmas. I can admit that in my youth I never saw the fascination of looking at four wrinkled grey haired women sitting around a kitchen table eating cheesecake and calling each other sluts, old maids and idiots and yet as the years pressed upon me and my personal friendships became deeper, I now find myself sitting around my table eating bowls of organic cereal while calling my friends with their building potbellies and receding hairlines calling each Ho, Fat Ass and Mr. Dirty Boy. We may not be all that "Golden" but we are catching a bit of SHINE nearing our mid-life years.

By the time Sex In The City arrived on the scene, my television days declined into serious and conscious driven viewing. I also made it a point to only support those shows that made real efforts to employ Black actors in real roles and represented what I considered real like ME. There were very few choices and if I subtract the over saturation of Black Athletes, shows trying to make Rappers into Stars with bad behavior, there wasn’t much to choose from in Black television outside of pushing the sitcom as the only image of who Black people were in America. With the soon to be absent Girlfriends; we can look forward to shows like Lipstick Jungle, Cashmere Mafia and Gossip Girl. I know, I know I don’t want to get all-RACIAL and all but I only see is one Asian in all of the three shows mentioned which is Lucy Liu. So much for diversity on television. I guess Hillary and Obama can address that in their next debate. Then again, maybe not.

THE BEST GOLDEN GLOBES MONEY CAN BUY

It’s confirmed; I have skipped over my parents and become my Grandmother. I am so set in my ways that I look for the sadness and misery in others for my amusement, and watching the 2008 Golden Globes did not disappoint.

I had to keep checking my cable remote to make sure I wasn’t watching CNN or FOX because for a minute, I thought I was watching a caucus. The reporter faces had this BLANK, “I don’t know what to do next” look just like the political reporters that lost script trying to comment on the election of the REAL.

I know I like to look at most things as they really are and without the fluff but living in a world where fantasy and escapism is the norm, I LOVED THE GOLDEN GLOBES just as they were because it was carried out like it was suppose to, like an awards ceremony while them stank ass Mofo’s had to do their drinking, drugging and daily insanity at home. So while the people who make their money promoting THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE stood there as if they were all Anchoring Reporters demoted to covering the epidemic of "dog shyt" on public streets, we all witnessed what I can only describe as a does of UNION POWER. America was sent to its room without supper for "Watching too much and Thinking too little; for YEARS."

I mean DAYUM, no parties no expensive cars, no advertisers, no free gift bags, no free flowing of alcohol, no movie hair, borrowed BLOOD DIAMONDS and them dresses and tuxedoes. Flippin the channel back and forth I couldn’t help remember that famous line from Sparkle: “They don’t need them dresses, they don’t need them make-ups, those girls can SANG !!!” Even better, I don't have to watch hour upon hour of Morning and Talk Show News about who had the best speech, who was funny and who had attitude for not winning nor do I have to deal with the Best and Worst Dressed breakdowns and the WHERE YOU CAN BUY A KNOCK OFF DRESS FROM.

See, GOD does bless you when you ask for it sometimes.

I trumpeted as my New Years' mantra, CLEAN SLATE FOR 2008 so that the issues of the past don't converge into my present. This here idiot box is taking a serious beating so far but I think its calling on my mantra more than I. The professional athletes are being busted for performance enhancement drugs left and right and now have to play at NORMAL levels, you have qualified politicians talking about real issues in politics and they look like REAL PEOPLE WITH REAL ISSUES as well, the States are now starting to seriously look at banning the Death Penalty, the Writer’s Strike is making Hollywood recognize that you can’t do shyt unless they write shyt, Broadway got shut down as well and caved to giving up them dollars, Corporate America out sourced jobs are getting snagged with compliance issues; issues that are poisoning and killing peoples as well as costing them more outside the country then if they had kept them in the States to begin with, the media can’t guess and BS anymore because they are blatantly getting it wrong, and those people with no Talent (Superhead, Wendy Williams and I Love New York) and the music industry are being called on their ineptitude and shallowness.

The last time we saw an awards ceremony like this, I think Gone With The Wind was the HOTNESS. People didn’t have TV like that and media had to broadcast most of it on radio. All I kept hearing from the Hollywood reporters were, ‘Oh it was so boring, Oh how I miss the RED CARPET, WOW those Striking Writers might be coming back, I hope they do by the Oscars, Oh how television lost so much money", but all I kept seeing was the reality that over the course of seven years, these award shows went on as if nothing was happening in the world, like Iraq, Katrina, Unemployment, Jena 6, children kidnapped, people loosing homes, over populated prisons, increase trafficking in guns and drugs, people held as sex slaves, illegal immigation, national infristructure issues, fires and tornadoes wiping out whole towns and I can go on. Yes I know this is a time when people can reward those talents for their work in fantasy (I am an actor and writer myself and I do like to be acknowledged for it from time to time) BUT this was the best thing that ever happened to TELEVISION and AMERICAN media; the Writer’s Strike.

If this had happened just before the Invasion of Iraq, we might have paid more attention to what was happening to our government and economy and stopped it.