Boondocks: Cosby's Younger, Hipper Son

Last fall's arrival of The Boondocks represented the opening of a new front in the war on black culture in the form of a show that lampoons the very stereotypes and pathologies that collectively signify the African-American intraracial divide. It is the post-civil rights generation's answer to growing up black in a world where integration has meant that injustice is an equal opportunity employer. À la Chris Rock's infamous 1996 "black people vs. niggas" riff, The Boondocks airs dirty laundry within the larger black community, but does so with wit, and without letting society as a whole off the hook for falling off the wagon when it comes to racism. The Boondocks: The Complete First Season DVD, released this week, provides a well-packaged opportunity to review a comprehensively funny, clever, well-timed manifesto on the world according to Aaron McGruder.

Everything about the first season of The Boondocks worked. Its animé-lite artwork appealed to a generation weaned on reruns of Star Blazers, and McGruder's jokes were in tune with an audience that reveres Family Guy as high art. Add guest voices ranging from Mos Def to Adam West, and a soundtrack that includes a memorable opening theme by Asheru and Blue Black of The Unspoken Heard, and you have a winning formula. Even finding its home on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim after being turned down by other networks just seemed to makes sense for the show -- The Boondocks wouldn't feel quite right on Fox or The CW.

The Boondocks' suburban community of Woodcrest is paradise for Robert Freeman, a.k.a. Granddad (John Witherspoon), and purgatory for Huey and Riley (both voices by Regina King). Granddad moved to the 'burbs to enjoy retirement and get the boys out of inner-city Chicago. But grammar school revolutionary Huey and wannabe gangsta Riley have only placid, mostly white neighbors as an audience for their defiant stances on issues ranging from putting a black Jesus in the school holiday pageant to freeing wrongly accused Shabazz K. Milton Berle from death row. They rail against Ruckus (Gary Anthony Williams), the local Uncle Tom who claims to suffer from "re-vitiligo," fictional rapper Gangstalicious, who has a ubiquitous hit song, "Thuggin' Love," and neighbors Ed Wunsler, Jr. (Charlie Murphy) and Gin Rummy (Samuel L. Jackson), gun-toting "wiggas" whose words and deeds mock George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.

McGruder's caustic takes on African America have been followed by readers of his comic strip for years. With the TV version, he has fully realized satire's potential to lay bare the most acute absurdities about black life in our times. All of the first season's episodes are dead-on when it comes to finding the humor in the juxtaposition of incompatible fragments black culture and mainstream society.

Consider the show's treatment of one of the most irrational chapters in recent pop cultural memory in "The Trial of Robert Kelly," skewering the ludicrousness of the unresolved schism in the black community regarding accused pedophile and R&B superstar R. Kelly. A defiant Riley challenges do-gooding Assistant D.A. Tom DuBois (Cedric Yarbrough) thusly: "I see piss comin' -- I move. She saw piss comin' -- she stayed. And why should I have to miss out on the new R. Kelly album just for that?"

By using the point/counterpoint of the two young brothers, The Boondocks can take on almost any simmering controversy and stew it to comic perfection. While Riley defends R. Kelly to the end, the more sage Huey admonishes, "Every famous nigga that gets arrested is not Nelson Mandela. We all know the nigga can sing, but what happened to standards? ... You want to help R. Kelly? Then get some counseling for R. Kelly, introduce him to some older women, hide his camcorder ..." Like newsprint political cartoons that can wrap up issues like war or famine with one panel and a good line, Huey and Riley can dispatch an unsavory mess like the R. Kelly scandal with a few precocious words.