TV needs to stop treating black characters as expendable

Anyone turning on a television over the past few weeks has seen no shortage of news bulletins about unarmed black men, women, and children being shot dead by police. When the news ends, however, the virtual killings begin.

TV dramas have become absolutely riddled with black bodies. If you want to hazard a guess about which characters might get killed off on your average show, your safest bet is to start with the color of their skin.

The trend continued this week on ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Last week, the show seemed prime to kill off Mack (Henry Simmons): He was lowered into a hidden alien city, became possessed, and attacked his team before falling back down the shaft (presumably to his death). But he didn't die. Instead, the show brought its other black S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Triplett, (B.J. Britt) into the city and killed him off. In less than two seasons, S.H.I.E.L.D. has had its three African American heroes die, narrowly escape death, or come back from the dead. The only white characters who have died have been guest stars and villains.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Triplett's death is just the latest in an ever-rising body count, most of which come from gun violence. Captain Roy Montgomery on Castle. Jocelyn Carter on Person of Interest. David Estes on Homeland. Lukas Frye on House of Lies. Tara on True Blood. Deputy Emmett Yawners on Banshee. Danny on Doctor Who. LaGuerta and Doakes on Dexter. Chalky White and more on Boardwalk Empire. Lewis Young on Flashpoint. Holy Wayne in The Leftovers. The Cowboy on The Blacklist. Harrison on Scandal. On NBC's Heroes, DL couldn't phase himself around a bullet — his big superhero power — and was shot to death. There are plenty of other examples from the past year alone: True Detective, American Horror Story: Coven, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Ray Donovan, Fargo, The Walking Dead, and more.

In some cases, these deaths can be justified for off-screen reasons. Rizzoli & Isles had no choice but to kill off Detective Barry Frost after actor Lee Thompson Young killed himself in 2013. When Scandal killed Harrison, it was only after actor Columbus Short's struggle with drug abuse and violence.

Other shows find themselves in a corner when it comes to writing in a shocking death, though good textual reasons don't excuse the greater racial ramifications. Person of Interest wanted to showcase the danger of the team's heroism, and Joss Carter was the most expendable characters after the show's original stars, Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson. Her death created one of the most amazing opening montages on television, but it also removed the one major African-American character of the series, and ended one of Taraji P. Henson's best roles.

In most cases, attempts to make television more diverse are clashing with the self-fulfilling "realities" of the business. As Jenji Kohan described last year, white, upper-class inmate Piper is the Trojan horse of Orange is the New Black, allowing Kohan to sell a network "a show on really fascinating tales of black women, and Latina women, and old women, and criminals." Shonda Rhimes couldn't produce Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder without first offering Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, which proved the power of her diverse casting. White stars sell a series, and diversity fuels the less essential and easily expendable supporting cast.

When white characters are killed off, it's a shock. Take the surprise death of Will Gardner in The Good Wife, which spawned countless interviews and think pieces on his death and what it would mean for the show. (Of course, the story was only written because Josh Charles wanted off the show, much like Mark Sloane and Lexie Grey in Grey's Anatomy, or Daniel Grayson in Revenge.)

By contrast, when black characters are shot and/or killed, the act provokes little surprise, and is rarely the result of the actor or actress asking to be written out. In the case of S.H.I.E.L.D. — a show run by a white man and a woman of color, and containing a decent amount of diversity — black men have been treated as pawns in the games of others, with recent episodes essentially taunting audiences over which of the two black agents would survive.

No matter what the rationale for the character's death is within the show, each death sets a greater pattern for the audience. One well-intentioned plot twist is still part of a larger and rampant whole, as we run out of fingers counting the black bodies that fall on television every year.

This is the problem with treating diversity as a slow evolution through supporting roles in television and film, where the problem is the same. If diversity, as Hollywood implicitly argues, is a problem best tackled by casting actors of color in major supporting roles, than those roles cannot be seen as expendable. When it comes time for a black man or woman to die, it should never, ever be so easy or expected — especially not in a world where real, unarmed black bodies keep falling.