It’s Sunday night and I’m getting ready for the week, while not-really-watching the final minutes of Family Guy.
Hark- the faint pinging of my browndar!
It’s some new show on FOX, one which I don’t recognize; apparently, it stars someone from The Office and an actor who played one of Carrie’s love interests on SATC (“Carrie likes a JAZZ man!!”), plus two randoms, one of whom is vaguely brown. Now I’m paying attention.
I’m confused; this actor looks familiar, but I can’t place him…then I remember! He is Shaun Majumder, and he played Kumar’s snotty, perfect older brother! Back to my TV: on the show, the foursome are standing in line, outside a club. All I can think of is Amardeep’s post about Kumar/Kal and the question of accents for actors. I wonder where this guy will draw the line…
“This place looks like it is going off the hook!”
How odd…he barely has an accent, by Hollywood/Apu standards. He’s obviously playing someone desi. Within minutes, I discover that his character is a Doctor (that’s better than convenience store clerk/terrorist, no?). The show is funny, but I’m disappointed, because everything I hurriedly read about it during the commercial break positively references Seinfeld. Way to inspire impossible expectations, critics!
Some of you have no doubt been wondering where comic/actor Shaun Majumder has been for the last year or so, ever since he (fictionally) blew up Valencia, Calif., in the opening episodes of last season’s 24.
Not to worry. The boy’s been working. Working a lot. And now, as those labours begin to bear fruit, he’s popping up all over the tube. Indeed, it’s getting so you won’t be able to turn on your TV without Majumder’s grinning mug staring back out at you.
“Been a little bit busy here in the H-Wood,” Majumder allows, checking in by phone. “Things have been good.” [TheStar]
Unhitched made its mid-season debut this month; FOX has six episodes to try out.
The irreverent new series, in which Majumder plays one of four newly single friends looking for love in all the wrong places, is produced by the filmmaking Farrelly Brothers, best known for such balls-out funny feature fare as Dumb & Dumber (idiot buddy flick), Kingpin (a one-handed bowler), There’s Something About Mary (semen hair-gel), Stuck on You (co-joined idiot buddy flick), Shallow Hal (Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit) and The Ringer (rigging the Special Olympics).
In what may be a first for prime-time television comedy, they have carried that scatological, sophomoric sensibility to the new medium with them.
You know pretty much what you’re in for when, even before the opening credits of the pilot episode, series lead Craig Bierko is dry-humped by a horny monkey. [TheStar]
Well gosh, I’m sad I missed THAT!
The bar is thus immediately set – whether high or low is for you to decide. Majumder, for one, is thrilled. “You can’t help but think of all those screenwriting seminars. You know, ‘Grab ’em in the first 10 pages . . .’
” ‘Hmm. Okay then . . . monkey rape!’
“It does kind of set the tone for the whole series.” [TheStar]
You can watch Unhitched on demand, here, or you may tune in on Sundays, at 9:30.
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My two favorite “American” brown fillums are Harold and Kumar and The Namesake; actors from both of those movies are now starring on FOX shows which are on my must-watch list. This post told you about Shaun, I don’t have time to delve in to how Moushumi, a.k.a. Zuleikha Robinson has a meaty role on New Amsterdam. Robinson doesn’t play a desi character, but who cares when the show is so appealing (see it tomorrow, at 9pm).
Also interesting: Shaun’s real name is similar to the fictional Moushumi’s surname- Mazumdar. Yes, it takes very little to amuse me. 😉
Pardesi Gurgaon aka PG, was this your experience in the Emperor’s Club? Or is this how you spent the time when waiting in those long lines in India’s train stations? (Since 1993!)
My experience since 2005, Honey.
Most of the Indian stereotypes are actually the kind of stereotypes desis like to throw around themselves, he’s a doctor, he’s assimilated with american friends BUT he doesn’t sleep around, it’s as if they asked auntie back home how a typical Indian guy is.
49 · Pardesi Gurgaon said
Quiet you behave that why I do not brag on myself.
26 · KXB said
Hello… Thank you! This show is vastly underrated by the primetime lovers of today (Two & a Half Men? SERIOUSLY?)AND might I add, stars one of my favorite non-stereotypically accented browns, Maulik Pancholy. I love that his name is Jonathan on the show and that his desi-ness is never mentioned. Quiet brownness… it’s a good thing. PS, on Weeds he plays a gay man. Represent!
Anna: Thanks for posting this. Not that it matters but Shaun happens to be the son of My high school buddy Jyoti Majumder’s brother. Jyoti lives in Zurich for last 35 years. We also know Maulik Pancholi’s family, his Mom and Sister. Maulik’s sister Sona lives in Bethesda and is an outstanding lawyer.
Did anybody catch ‘New Amsterdam’ episode tonight? It looked like a textbook example a prof might use to illustrate Said’s ‘Orientalism.’ What could be more cliched and insensitive as tonight’s show? [SPOILER ALERT!] 1. Terrible Indian accents. 2. Honor killings by a desi family in NYC, because their daughters had been raped. The father says something to the effect of, ‘They took what is rightfully mine [ie daughter’s honor]. I have the right to take it back.’ 3. Montages of Jackson Heights, as if it is a banana republic within the upright USA. This is such an exploitation of inaccurate tropes, besides being a hack-job in terms of the writing.
I did. If people thought Majumder’s accent in a silly comedy was problematic, this show with the accents used in service of perpetrating the backwardness of a serial honor killing Indian family is simply appalling!
The episode is named ‘Honor’, by the way, in case anybody is interested.