culture
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Return to ShondaLand: 10 Things to Remember for the New Seasons of Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder
With last year’s addition of How to Get Away With Murder to ABC’s existing Thursday-night lineup, which already included Scandal and longtimer Grey’s Anatomy, Thursday nights were officially rebranded as #TGIT. And for the past several months, TGIT fans have suffered through withdrawal from all of the murders, affairs, scandals and general degeneracy to which they have grown accustomed. But finally,…
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Wesley Snipes Could Have Run the Empire, but He’s Good With The Player
It’s no secret that Lee Daniels initially envisioned Wesley Snipes—over Terrence Howard—in the role of Lucious Lyon on Empire. While Snipes is not ruling the Lyon clan, he has joined TV’s diversity party with NBC’s The Player, a high-concept, action-packed drama set in Vegas where high rollers gamble on whether a player will stop a…
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We Don’t All Look Alike, but if You Think We Do, Thank Racism
A recent New York Times article opens with a false dichotomy. Its peg is the overly forceful arrest of James Blake by a plainclothes police officer. The arrest, for which New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton has since apologized, occurred when the biracial tennis star was mistaken for another black man suspected of ID…
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6 Tips on Approaching Women (Without Scaring Them)
According to certain people on the Internets, men just don’t know how to approach women anymore. Because feminism apparently gives these men mixed messages. Or maybe it’s the fear of street-harassment whistles. Or Planned Parenthood. Or Beyoncé’s “7/11” video. Either way, (some) men are apparently confused as hell, because “Hey, it’s probably not the best…
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In a Display of ‘Peak Caucasity,’ a White Man Claims He’s the Reason Another White Man Can Live in Brooklyn, NY
It’s only on depressing days that I need the Internet the most. Not because I obsessively Google phantom ailments (which I do), but because I need to be reminded that all of us—the collective us, not a race us—are better than we let on. It’s that Internet moment of “the kid with the ailment scores…
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Morris Chestnut on Playing a Doctor in His New Series, Rosewood
In the pilot episode of Rosewood, which premieres Wednesday on Fox, Dr. Beaumont Rosewood Jr., a Miami-based private pathologist (in other words, a medical examiner who is not on the municipal payroll), comes upon a crime scene and deduces the cause of death and the scenario leading to it in a matter of minutes. And…
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Empire’s Back and So Is Jussie Smollett
Empire is going to be crazier this season. That’s what one of the Fox show’s stars, Jussie Smollett, promises. That Empire will be much crazier than last season is a feat that sounds impossible, but Smollett swears the writers, actors and producers embraced the craziness challenge and kicked the drama up beyond a few notches, going…
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TV Review: Black-ish Has Some Hilarious Things to Say About the N-Word
Promising an edgier sophomore season, Black-ish kicks off season 2 with the highly anticipated “n-word episode.” Whether or not it sparks a national conversation about the historically divisive issue remains to be seen, but it certainly delivers on the laughs. During a school talent show, Jack (Miles Brown)—aka “Party Time,” the youngest of the Johnson boys—performs Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” and…
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Should You Talk About Money Problems in the Bedroom? Ask Our Experts
Harriette Cole is the author of the book of meditations 108 Stitches: Words We Live By and a contributing editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.
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Why I Dislike Facebook’s New Dislike Button
Has a news story ever made you extremely happy, at first, and then extremely salty by the time you finished reading it? Like putting a spoonful of lime sherbet in your mouth, only to realize it’s actually wasabi? I’m asking to make sure I’m not alone, because that happened to me twice last week. First…