In Living Color - Season 1

The complete first season of the TV series In Living Color was a bold and subversively funny sketch-comedy series that unabashedly tackled issues of race relations and cultural stereotypes, unlike the original Saturday Night Live cast. According to a "Looking Back" segment, it took series creator Keenen Ivory Wayans a year to sell the pilot. He fronted a young, gifted, and mostly black cast, including David Alan Grier, Tommy Davidson, Damon Wayans, Kim Wayans, and T'Keyah "Crystal" Keyman, with "James" Carrey and Kelly Coffield as the white Garret Morrises.

Like the first season of SNL, In Living Color played provocateur, with politically incorrect sketches such as "Homeboy Shopping Network," "This Old Box," and "Ted Turner's Very Colorized Classics." Other sketches, such as "Riding Miss Daisy," had a stick-it-to-the-man brazenness. Don King, Mike Tyson, Milli Vanilli, and Arsenio Hall were easy targets, but the show did not spare such icons as Richard Pryor. There was the inevitable Oprah roasting, but also a brilliant Star Trek spoof, "The Wrath of Farrakhan."

Among the first season's breakout characters were Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier's finger-snapping "Men on Film," and Damon's Homey D. Clown. Carrey strut his stuff as "female" bodybuilder Vera DeMilo, while Coffey was a scream as Samantha Kinison and Andrea Dice Clay. While much of the topical humor has dated, sketches such as "Michael Jackson Potato Head" are timeless.

The fun of revisiting this groundbreaking series is watching these fearless and talented performers go for broke, and make the most of their unlikely opportunity. The In Living Color ensemble was definitely ready for prime time, but the question remained - was prime time ready for In Living Color? This 1990 series boldly went where SNL feared to tread, and the result was a provocative, subversive, and often hilarious take on race, culture, and society.

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