Representation on TV: October Highlights Include ‘P-Valley’ and ‘As We See It,’ Plus Discussion of Latinx Representation

Welcome to October’s Representation on TV Highlights. This month’s highlights include news about P-Valley and As We See It. 

There is also news from Warner Bros. Discovery, Amazon, and Disney. Plus, Tell-Tale TV team member Brianna Martinez shares her thoughts on the state of Latinx representation on TV.

In the News

As We See It Canceled by Amazon

• Amazon announced the cancellation of the coming-of-age series about a group of friends with Autism after just one season.
• The series from Friday Night Lights and Parenthood producer Jason Katims was well-received by critics, with a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Disney Awards One Million Dollar Grant to Exceptional Minds

• The company is giving a one million dollar multi-year grant to the organization as part of their Future Storytellers Initiative. 
• Exceptional Minds is nonprofit creative arts academy for young adults with Autism. The grant will fund the expansion of the academy’s curriculum and technological capacities.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Shuts Down, Then Reorganizes Its Writers and Directors Workshop

• On October 11th, WBD announced the end of its Writers and Directors training program after 40 years. 
• TV professionals quickly criticized the decision, as the program is a vital channel for many writers and directors from underrepresented communities breaking into the industry. 
• The next day, WBD announced that it would not shut down the training program. They would instead reorganize it. WBD’s DEI department will run the new program, but details on the revamped program are still unknown.

 

On TV Screens: P-Valley

This month, P-Valley fans got the news they’d been waiting for. The crew of The Pynk will be back for a third season. Starz announced the renewal on October 20th while noting that P-Valley is now their most popular show.

For those unfamiliar with the series, P-Valley is a neo-noir drama set in the Mississippi Delta. It tells the stories of the employees, clients, and surrounding community of a small but popular strip club called The Pynk.

Through high-stakes drama and larger-than-life characters, the series explores gender, race, sexuality, and class. Season 2 specifically tackled Covid, George Floyd’s murder, trauma, and domestic abuse.

Commenting on the show’s renewal, P-Valley’s creator, Katori Hall, described the series saying, “with its complex, dynamic, and beautifully flawed characters, this show is a love letter to marginalized communities in the American South who rarely see themselves reflected on screen.”

Seasons 1 and 2 of P-Valley on available on Starz (and apps that stream Starz). There are no details yet on Season 3’s premiere date. 

 

Spotlight: Brianna Martinez Discusses Latinx Representation

It’s not something you really start to notice until it disappears. I grew up with a fair amount of inclusive programming. There was the wonderfully stacked roster that was UPN (gone but never forgotten). Nickelodeon and PBS had a wealth of grade school programming, as well. And, of course, I had my fair share of age-appropriate telenovelas.

It wasn’t until the last decade that I realized many of those shows are all but absent in the American Primetime sphere. As a Latina, I noticed there weren’t many places where I saw a Latino/a let alone a Cuban, on the screen.

Collectively, we had The George Lopez Show and Cristela, with most of the cast playing members of the varied diasporas that fall under the Latino banner.

Still, it felt like the bare minimum and covered such a narrow portion of the Latino population.

It wasn’t until we got shows like On My Block, Jane the Virgin, and One Day at a Time that we saw a wider array.

One Day at a Time and the Alvarez family was one of the first times I actually got to see parts of my family and my culture portrayed on American television as anything aside from the stereotypical Scarface, Miami Vice type of stories play out.

The fact that the writers got to tell Lydia’s story about the Peter Pan flights out of Cuba in the ’60s was remarkable. But just as quickly as these shows gave a different kind of portrayal, they went away.

ABC’s The Baker and The Beauty was another wonderful example but was canceled after just one season.

Netflix canceled On My Block and Gentefied in 2021. Prior to that, Netflix canceled One Day at a Time. It was saved by Pop TV, but only for one season. 2022 saw even more cancelations and cutbacks. The frequency of these announcements is causing what could have been the start of a flourishing Latin landscape on American television to roll back.

As studios, streamers, and networks crunch numbers, the first ones that are up on the chopping block are the minority-led shows (just look to Warner Bros. Discovery news for the last few months).

In October, NPR spoke with America Ferrera, who noticed the same trend, especially regarding shows with a Latino-centered story. “When budgets shrink, when companies are having a difficult time, our projects are the first to go. We’re seen as the biggest risk. We’re seen as the biggest unknown factor.”

She added, “We’re treated as, you know, the pet project, the pro bono work.”

And it becomes an even bigger problem when you look at the Afro-Latino community’s lack of representation.

According to a September Latino Donor Collaborative Report, despite making up 20% of the U.S. population, Latinos only represent 3.1% of lead actors on TV and 2.1% of co-lead/ensemble actors.

Worse, only 1.5% of TV showrunners and 1.3% of directors are Latino.

Though the numbers are slowly indicating some progress, with the entertainment industry in flux, deploying cost-cutting mode, it’s a time of uncertainty. 

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