'The Game' Renewed By BET For Fifth Season

As I've mentioned in a few posts, I love the Mara Brock Akil produced show The Game which is a spinoff of Girlfriends.  

Melanie Barnett-Davis, Tia Mowry's character on the show is a first cousin to Girlfriends Joan Clayton and her character was originally introduced on that show. 

Oh yeah, speaking of Girlfriends, didn't appreciate the stank way it was dismissed after eight years on the air.  Word from Mara Brock Akil is that if we show the same kind of support for Girlfriends that was shown for the Game, there's a possibility Girlfriends could be resurrected as a series or even a movie.

But back to The Game.  

It was recently made official to no one's surprise that The Game has been renewed for a fifth season with a full 22 episode run that will start in January 2012.

I say not surprising because ever since the show was picked up by BET, it has thrived.   The opening episode drew 7.7 million viewers and although that fell off to a steady 3-4 million viewers and it only had a 13 episode run, those are still impressive numbers for a cable network.

Those numbers also positively impacted the show that follows it on BET, Let's Stay Together, which debuted with 4 million people watching it.   It managed to get  2 million viewers tuning it and was also renewed for another season with 22 episodes as well.   

The fans of The Game, who waged a successful three year campaign to get the show back on the air after its 2009 cancellation on the CW after its third season, have expressed the desire to the show's producers to have those episodes in the Season 5 be hour long ones.

We'll see if they hear us on this one. 

Black In Latin America Series On PBS

I've been aware that there were people of African descent that spoke Spanish, French and Portuguese for a long time.

I knew about Haiti's history as the first Black republic, that Mariah Carey's father was a Black Venezuelan, had Panamanian friends who are proud of their Black and Latin heritage, and was intrigued to discover after watching coverage of an NABJ convention panel discussion about Hurricane Katrina on C-SPAN CNN journalist Soledad O'Brien has an Afro-Cuban mother.   I also wrote posts that talks about Mexican president Vicente Guerrero and his African heritage and about Black  Latinas. 

My fascination with it was triggered by the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.    I was watching the boxing competition with my father and the match that was on ABC was an early round one involving the great Teofilo Stevenson, who was about to start his run of microwave beatdowns enroute to the gold medal.

When I remarked to my dad while watching the Stevenson match that I wasn't aware there were brothers and sisters in Cuba, my dad said in a matter of fact tone,"the slave ships stopped in Cuba, too."

Yep, they did.    Out of the 11.5 million Africans who survived the brutal Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up in the Western Hemisphere, only 450,000 arrived in the United States.   Brazil received ten times that number.    Africans also arrived in Peru, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.   

Renee talked about it on her blog, but I'm looking forward to the latest PBS special courtesy of Dr. Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates entitled Black In Latin America.    The four hour series will explore race and identity issues in Latin America.

The shows will cover the following topics: 

• April 19 - Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided
• April 26 - Cuba: The Next Revolution
• May 3 - Brazil: A Racial Paradise?
• May 10 - Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet

I'm looking forward to watching this PBS series that starts at 8 PM EDT on your local PBS stations and getting my learn on..
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Sherri Shepherd Puts Pumps In Mouth Again

This isn't the first time that Sherri Shepherd has opened her mouth to say some clueless or borderline transphobic or homophobic ish on The View, but is the latest example of it.

She chimes in with her thoughts on the J. Crew ad controversy when the ladies of The View start discussing it.



Can y'all get a thoughtful sister like Jacque Reid, Kerry Washington, Victoria Rowell....anybody to replace her?