I Miss Bill Cosby

It occurred to me recently that I miss Bill Cosby.  Don't worry, he's not dead.  He's not even irrelevant.  He's still out there making enough noise that it'll be a long, long time before anyone writes a "whatever happened to" article about him.  But sadly, his relevance today has been reduced to antagonistic speeches and arguments about whether he's a self-hating racist.  I am so tired of such arguments, which always seem to depend entirely on misinterpretation and speculation.

These days, so many people associate the Cos with Jello Pudding Pops and galvanizing speeches that it's easy to forget that he's not just another entertainer; he's a man who has played a dominant role in entertaining America for generations, often in radical ways.

If you listen to the comedy monologues he delivered in the 1960s, you find that, as a stand-up comedian, Bill Cosby is indeed (as his first and most famous album title declares) "a Very Funny Fellow."  But that's only if you just listen.  Yes, his words are "very funny," but to get the full Cosby effect, you have to watch him.  In the 80s, Cosby developed a reputation for shamelessly mugging at the camera, but check out his hilarious facial expressions in, for example, the "Noah's Ark" monologue (which you can do courtesy of YouTube, and possibly other online sources).  As the incredulous Noah, who can't quite bring himself to believe that God Himself is talking to him, Cosby lets his face show you all that you need to know.  Cosby not only wrote brilliant material for his stand-up acts; the guy was a natural, and very gifted comic performer.

Many of us young enough to first be acquainted with Cosby through The Cosby Show may not be aware that, in addition to his brilliant stand-up acts, Cosby spent the 60s, 70s, and early 80s carving out a successful career as a highly respected dramatic actor.  During a time when the best role a black actor could find was as a supporting character subservient to the white hero (and then, only if he was extremely lucky) I Spy revolutionized onscreen racial relations by depicting the characters played by Cosby and Robert Culp as not only equals, but also friends.  Meanwhile, in movie theaters, the Cos alternated a series of semi-blaxploitation films with Sidney Poitier (who, at the time, was perhaps the most "relevant" black actor in Hollywood) with films written by some of the most respected writers available (Neil Simon's California Suite, Tom Mankiewicz's Mother, Jugs, and Speed, etc.).

Okay, so he was not the first African-American to release a movie based entirely on stand-up material; that honor goes to Richard Pryor.  But laugh for laugh, not even Pryor's best material could compare to Bill Cosby: Himself, released in 1983 and as funny the 100th time as it is the first.  I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to stand firm on that claim.  You may have a personal preference of one over the other, but even among Pryor's biggest fans, I have yet to meet anyone who has actually claimed to laugh more at a Pryor stand-up film than at Bill Cosby: Himself.

Himself provided a lot of material for the first season of what would become Cosby's biggest claim to fame, The Cosby Show.  So many sitcoms have come and gone since, that people forget that The Cosby Show wasn't just another TV series, it was no less than a cultural phenomenon.  TV historians point to this one series as single-handedly reviving the sitcom format, which at the time had been disappearing in both popularity and prevalence.  One could argue that we wouldn't have a Friends, Raymond, or Big Bang Theory if Cosby hadn't come along with his continuing comic saga of the Huxtable family.  By depicting African-Americans as no different than a white family (the Huxtables weren't just well-adjusted, well-educated, likable Americans, they were upper-middle class!) Cosby courted both criticism and praise -- and won over most of the critics.  By insisting on complete creative control, and involving himself with behind-the-scenes aspects of the show -- helping choose the cast, produce the show, write the scripts, and even score the theme song -- Cosby achieved the type of power unprecedented for a black actor.  And by infusing the characters with heart and observational humor, Cosby created a believable family, and a series that is just plain funny.  It's one of the few shows where the jokes never get dated, and the humor holds up even for people like me, who generally detest sitcoms.

Towards the end of The Cosby Show, that's where the Cos's career started to slip.  The now familiar Cosby Show and the relatively new The Simpsons were the two shows that ruled the airwaves at the time, and when they were eventually scheduled for the same time slot, one show was simply bound to lose.  I can't help but wonder if The Cosby Show might have won if Cosby and his writers hadn't chosen that exact moment to add elements that caused the series to jump the shark.  That final year is the season where they brought in uninteresting new characters led by Cousin Pam, and her friends.  The idea was that the Huxtable kids were growing up, and the writers wanted to make the show relevant for younger audiences again.  People were so uninterested in Pam and her interchangeable friends, you could almost hear the click of the nation using one big collective remote to change the channel to Fox's Simpsons dynamo.

The Cosby Mysteries and Cosby followed, and I'd argue that both shows, neither of them that successful with either critics or ratings, were under-rated.  Chances are, if you like TV mysteries and sitcoms, you'd like The Cosby Mysteries and Cosby.  They weren't that bad, they weren't that great, but their biggest flaws were simply that they were Cosby shows, but not The Cosby Show, if you catch my distinction.  At least Cosby managed to stay on the air a few years, perhaps by virtue that, even if it wasn't the same as The Cosby Show, it at least reunited Cosby with Cosby Show co-star Phylicia Rashad, and returned them to the sitcom format.  The Cosby Mysteries, whatever its good points, was a marketing folly, casting America's Favorite Dad (as TV Guide kept referring to Cosby and his Cosby Show character) as a standard TV detective in a series not intended for laughs.  The failure of The Cosby Mysteries may be due to casting against type more than to actual flaws, but it was a failure that was inevitable.

And what are we left with now?  Gone are Cosby the Brilliant Stand-Up Comic, Cosby the Serious Actor, Cosby the Sitcom King, Cosby the Comeback Wannabe.  Now we're left with Cosby the Grumpy Old Man.  You know what?  I actually like Cosby the Grumpy Old Man.  Amidst all the ridiculous speculation that Cosby has become a self-hating black man, or a grampa teetering on the edge of senility, if you actually listen to his modern-day rants -- including the unfairly infamous "Pound Cake Speech" -- he has a lot of interesting stuff to say.  Grumpy Cosby makes a lot of good points, and he makes them with equal parts humor and sincerity -- in other words, he's just a grumpier version of all the previous Bill Cosbys we've come to know and love.

And yes, to amend my earlier comment, his current relevance does go beyond over-cooked controversies and over-analyzed speeches.  Ever see Comedian?  It's the documentary about Jerry Seinfeld's struggles to make a come-back to stand-up comedy after his temporary retirement.  Seinfeld -- love him or hate him, you gotta admit that he's one of the most famous, popular, and rich stand-up comedians ever -- is in awe of Cosby.  He's in awe of not only Cosby's talent, but also of the fact that Cosby, with his career's golden years long behind him, can still bring in numbers that even the immensely popular Jerry Seinfeld can only dream of.  "You fill theaters this size every night?" Seinfeld gasps.  Cosby seems unimpressed by his own success.  Make no mistake, he's still out there, and he's still kickin' it.  But the thing is, if you want to catch some new Bill Cosby material these days, you really gotta work to find it, and even then, you're only gonna find second grade stuff on a talk show or YouTube link.  Bill Cosby the Success is still out there.  Bill Cosby the Thinker is still out there.  Bill Cosby the Fun Guy?  He seems, sadly, long gone.  That's the Bill Cosby I miss.