The hot button of a casual embrace

CHRISTINE Campbell (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), the attractive but bumbling title character of CBS’ “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” and Daniel Harris (Blair Underwood), who teaches a predominantly white fourth grade, eye each other hungrily when they meet at the posh private school. But the two divorces fear that just going out on a date will invite disapproval and scorn and may even cause Daniel to lose his job.

The problem for the potential lovebirds has nothing to do with Christine being white and Daniel being black. Their barrier is a policy prohibiting teachers from dating parents. That they would be an interracial couple is basically a nonissue.

Or, as one of the mothers of a student in Mr. Harris’ class exclaims when she first spots the handsome new teacher, “Who knew diversity could be so gorgeous?”

The plight of Christine and Daniel is just one example of a flurry of interracial and interethnic relationships that have quietly developed in prime time during the last few seasons. Similar relationships on TV and film, particularly between blacks and whites, often touched off controversy or met resistance in past decades. But in recent seasons, with little or no fanfare, mixed couples have popped up on programs as disparate as “House,” “Lost,” “The L Word,” “Boston Legal,” “My Name Is Earl,” “Men in Trees” and “Desperate Housewives.”

NBC’s “Heroes,” about a group of ordinary people who discover they have superpowers, has at least three interracial relationships, including a troubled mom (Ali Larter) with a double personality who clashes with her estranged prison escapee husband (Leonard Roberts). On “Grey’s Anatomy,” Isaiah Washington’s and Sandra Oh’s characters are engaged, and T.R. Knight’s and Sara Ramirez’s characters recently eloped. FX’s “Nip/Tuck” featured Sanaa Lathan as a woman caught between two white men: her rich tycoon husband (Larry Hagman) and the plastic surgeon Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) treating him. On HBO’s racially charged “The Wire,” a Baltimore police major (Lance Reddick) hooked up with an assistant state attorney (Deidre Lovejoy) following the collapse of his marriage to a black woman.

Most of the series with mixed couples take a colorblind approach to the romances, downplaying the dynamics or scrutiny that such couples might encounter in real life. The colorful mash-ups that made Lucy and Ricky on “I Love Lucy” so intriguing yet familiar and comfortable have been toned down, largely stripped of cultural conflict and discovery. Issues of race may be front and center in the political, sports and entertainment arenas, but unlike last year’s Oscar winner “Crash,” where Los Angeles residents of different races repeatedly clashed and hurled racial epithets, the only “crash” on these shows is when the characters’ lips collide.

Producers of some of the shows say the influx represents a positive evolution demonstrating that such romances are no longer a big deal. But other producers and observers argue that the move toward colorblind romance oversimplifies race relations. It’s a debate that seems right at home in a culture that’s also split between celebrating the arrival of a formidable black presidential candidate and wondering if he’s “black enough.”

As more and more interracial couples take up residence on the small screen, the larger issue, as some see it, is more troubling: Guess who’s coming to dinner but not being invited to hang out after the dishes are cleared?

Diversity, after all, remains a problem on TV. Yes, more people of color are playing in the prime-time network arena, but they’re mostly on the sidelines, particularly when it comes to producing and writing teams and starring roles. Of nearly 60 prime-time series on the four major networks, only five have performers of color in leading roles, and only two -- “Ugly Betty” and “George Lopez” -- are built around minority characters.

Fox Entertainment President Peter Liguori late last month warned more than 40 producers of current shows and pilots that they had better increase their efforts to hire minority performers, writers and technicians or risk not getting picked up by the network. “We think as a network it’s the right, moral thing to do, and it’s the right business thing to do.... For TV, and certainly for Fox, to be vibrant, relevant and authentic, we need to be reflective of the general population.” (Census figures don’t track interracial couplings, but they do show a steady uptick in the number of mixed-race couples.)

Ligouri’s is not a new refrain. In 1999, Kweisi Mfume, then chairman of the NAACP, charged Fox, CBS, ABC and NBC with creating a “virtual whitewash in programming.” Mfume attacked the networks after pointing out that, of the 26 new comedies and dramas premiering this fall, none featured a minority in a leading role.

Mfume’s campaign against the industry was launched in the same year that one of network TV’s most notable colorblind couples drew attention. “Ally McBeal” featured a hot romance between the title character (Calista Flockhart) and a black doctor (Jesse L. Martin). David E. Kelley, the Fox show’s executive producer, said he did not want race to enter into the relationship of the Boston-based characters, a strategy that earned praise from some and criticism from others, who said the show’s treatment of interracial romance was unrealistic.

Now most of the series take Kelley’s approach. It’s a tack that the creators say reflects a positive “no big deal” attitude toward life in today’s cultural blender.

“These relationships are noteworthy because they are no longer newsworthy,” said Underwood, whose recurring role on “The New Adventures of Old Christine” will expand in future episodes. Underwood in the last few years has become the unofficial poster boy for interracial love in pop culture, with love connections in “Sex and the City,” the short-lived NBC drama “LAX” and in the film “Full Frontal.”

Kari Lizer, the creator of “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” said she was struck by the continued lack of diversity on network primetime, which she feels makes her show more revolutionary than she had anticipated. “It’s just shocking to see how segregated comedies are,” she said. “It should not be a bold move for Christine to have a black best friend, but it is.”

Still, it was important for her to illustrate a loving relationship between a white woman and a black man where race was not the main focus.

“I don’t see it entering their personal relationship,” said Lizer. “It’s not a factor, and there are enough factors for them to deal with. It’s not a fresh area, and I would love it to be a nonissue. Christine’s best friend is played by Wanda Sykes. We don’t act like the race aspect is invisible. We say it as a fact of life, and then move on.”

But the “say it and forget it” approach to race reflects a disturbing disconnect from reality, say detractors.

“These shows operate as if we live in a colorblind society, where everyone is equal and there are no problems,” said Jannette Dates, dean of the John H. Johnson School of Communications at Howard University. “They don’t even allow the nuances of the reality of interracial couples to come through. I don’t know of any interracial couple that doesn’t have to work at it. Society forces them to deal with their situation.”

Mara Brock Akil, creator of the CW’s “Girlfriends” and “The Game,” said she felt that the trend of depicting interracial love as ideal and harmonious smacked of dishonesty.

“I find it not only false but unfortunate that the very thing that defines the ‘interracial couple’ is not explored,” said Akil, who has included story lines about the differences of mixed couples in both of her shows. “And by not exploring race, not only do you miss the opportunity for great stories, you miss what is unique to their experience.”

Akil added: “It’s the elephant in the room. TV tends to shy away from where it thinks it will offend. Couples of different backgrounds are dealing with this. To not show it makes it bland. They might as well be of the same race.”

Call it progress

YET there’s a certain cautious optimism in some quarters about the arrival of TV’s casually mixed couples.

“There are definitely elements of these relationships that are progressive,” said Robert M. Entman, professor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs and author of “The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America.” “It makes these couples more normal, and if they’re more normal on TV, they might seem more normal out on the street. But they’re also not terribly realistic. We can’t expect these shows to get into the complexities, but it’s also a missed opportunity to acquaint whites with the persistence of racism.

“When it comes down to it, we still haven’t gotten beyond race. If we had, you’d see a romantic comedy with Denzel Washington and Sandra Bullock. That isn’t happening.”

Despite the shortfalls, others feel that having even colorblind romances on television is progress that should be celebrated.

Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, an executive producer of ABC Family’s “Lincoln Heights,” about a black family that moves from the suburbs to the inner city, said, “To show such a relationship in and of itself is taking a step that we haven’t seen before, and it’s wonderful that it can exist without the earth shaking or upsetting the status quo. It’s a huge step forward.

“There can be other shows, like ours, that can talk about the deeper question of how we are alike and different. But to show a black man and white woman in an embrace, or in bed, tells how huge strides have been made. I have felt the limitations of that exploration in the past, and that’s not what is happening today.”

Producers for ABC’s “Lost” and NBC’s “Heroes,” which have been praised for their multicultural casts, say that although they have not made a big deal out of interracial relationships on their shows, they feel the relationships can be used cleverly in story twists that can challenge viewers’ assumptions.

“Lost” last season featured Rose (L. Scott Caldwell), an African American woman who kept hoping that her missing husband had survived the plane crash that put her and dozens of others on the island. Her husband, Bernard (Sam Anderson), eventually surfaced; he turned out to be white, surprising some of the other survivors. The couple, who were spotlighted with a mysterious back story, may reappear in future episodes.

“With Bernard and Rose, we wanted to challenge audiences’ expectations,” said executive producer Carlton Cuse. “We got a lot of reaction from the audience, who did not expect her husband to be white.”

“Heroes” creator Tim Kring said he had plans to develop the relationship between split personality Niki (Larter) and her prison escapee husband, D.L. (Roberts), who also has special powers. “That relationship plays into a stereotype a little bit by the fact that he’s a fugitive from prison, and we’re going to turn that on its head,” said Kring. “Having mixed-race relationships on this show is the stuff of drama, and at some point, those issues will be dealt with.”

At least TV is more open than film to showing interracial romance, said actress Lathan. In addition to her interracial couplings on “Nip/Tuck” last season, Lathan starred in the film “Something New,” a romantic comedy about a successful but unlucky-in-love attorney whose life is turned upside down when she becomes involved with a white landscaper.

Lathan, who was proud of that film, said, “I actually think TV is lot farther ahead than movies when it comes to showing these kinds of relationships. I have so much respect for [“Nip/Tuck” creator] Ryan Murphy, because my character could have been any race. But race never came into it, and I love that. It’s long overdue, and there should be more of it. There’s a lot of interracial love in the world.”

greg.braxton@latimes.com