Out with NBC’s ‘Outsourced’

NBC’s “ Outsourced,” the ludicrous, cringe-inducing sitcom about an American’s relocation to Mumbai to manage a call center wraps up its inaugural season on Thursday and I, for one, won’t miss it. Here’s the general premise: All-American Todd (Ben Rappaport) oversees an Indian staff at a mail-order company where, according to the show’s website, he’s regularly forced to give his underlings a “crash course in all things American.” Goofy and stereotypical culture-clash gags ensue, accompanied by immature one-liners that veer toward the offensive. Take, for example, dialogue from last week’s episode as Tom, Charlie (another American expat played by Diedrich Bader) and call center employee Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan) take a train to a coworker’s wedding: Tom: What’s that smell? Chris: Dude, you wanna play what’s that smell on an Indian train? We’re going to be here all day. Here’s another exchange from a previous episode: Manmeet: You can use my cousin’s name. It means “bliss." Todd: Oh! Perfect, use that…wait what’s the name? Manmeet: “Sakdeep.” Todd: “No, I’m not going to be suck deep.” Sorry, friends, that stuff just ain’t funny. On the bubble “Outsourced” has received lukewarm reviews from the start and as it inches toward its last show of the season, it remains “ on the bubble”—it hasn’t yet been canceled or renewed for another season. This has prompted staff and fans to launch an effort to “ Save Outsourced”   via Facebook, and a letter-writing campaign to NBC exec Bob Greenblatt. But does “Outsourced” deserve another season? I can understand—and philosophically support—the efforts to save the show from the chopping block on multiple levels. For one, it’s the first TV show on American prime time to focus on the Indian experience. It’s also an important platform for a host of talented Indian actors. Despite the lackluster writing, Parvesh Cheena (Gupta), Thushari Jayasekera (Pinky), and Anisha Nagarajan (Madhuri) are pitch-perfect, and their comic timing is a joy to watch. But just because it’s a “first” doesn’t make it good—or worth revisiting in another season. Sure, it may be fun and validating to hear Hindi words sprinkled throughout the dialogue, or to see references to baratts, or to watch entire episodes dedicated to Holi. But beyond the surface-level cultural tickle, the show is built on lowest-common denominator clichés on both Indian and American culture. (One episode is actually titled “Charlie Curries a Favour from Todd.”) And although some are championing the show as a triumph for Indian-Americans, the show is ultimately about an American expat venturing forth into a strange, smelly, and foreign land, with all the requisite Westernised judgement packaged into jokes. The Indian actors sometimes feel like court jesters that only serve to provide comic fodder for the show’s American protagonist. Here’s the problem [caption id=“attachment_7881” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Actors Ben Rappaport (L-R), Rebecca Hazlewood and Sacha Dhawan. Frederick M Brown/Getty Images[/caption] Certainly, the premise of the show offers the potential for something brilliant—for smart, cutting, and comic cultural commentary on the very real misunderstandings between East and West, and between the worldview that comes from growing up in a Super Power versus an ascending one. In other words, there’s ample opportunity to allow Tom and his Indian staff to find the hilarious humanity in each other. Instead, “Outsourced” takes the easy route, and pokes fun at the Other and the foreign, and the show becomes a form of updated Orientalism couched as a wannabe global comedy (word on the street is the creator of the show had never visited India prior to its premiere). I think Priyanka Mantha, an Indian-American columnist from Hyphen explains the problem with the show’s writing best (full disclosure: I’m a Hyphen cofounder):

Comedy is truth alchemized, and this kind of myopic writing ignores true diversity in favor of recycled stereotypes that fall flat, and never allow their characters to deviate from two-dimensional caricature. Caricature can be funny; the cringe-worthy minstrel show can be a tongue-in-cheek critical analysis of the way certain stereotypes are misappropriated in the media. But this humor [in Outsourced] is never cold blooded and fearless enough to make the falsehood of each stereotype legible. Take 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan for example: the writers have molded him into an absurd embodiment of every African American stereotype that exists, in order to poke fun at those who would genuinely regard persons of color in that way. Outsourced has instead opted for a simpler recipe, in which stereotypes of each culture are presented as truth, and humor is meant to be derived from a basic comparison of the two. The result is cheap and unintelligent humor that ignores clever nuance in favor of scrawling out scenarios that many of us have seen million times before, creating false conceptions of Indians and Indian culture that the uninformed viewer will take literally.

Blast from the Past In many ways, the love-hate some of us feel for “Outsourced” reminds me of the deep ambivalence that the Asian-American community felt when “All American Girl,” featuring comedienne Margaret Cho, made it to the small screen in 1984. Back then, it was a historical moment—literally the second time that a prime time TV show centered on an Asian character and the first to feature (at least initially) a primarily Asian cast. Oh, how we looked to the show with such hope and anticipation! A programme about a modern and rebellious Asian American woman was the response we were looking for to the tired stereotypes of Asian Americans as the nerdy, bumbling foreigner. Finally, our glorious human and cultural complexity would be on full, fabulous display for all of America to see! Tragically, it fell far short. And it fell prey to many of the same criticisms I’ve levelled at “Outsourced”: Accent-tinged jokes about tired cultural stereotypes doesn’t make for compelling humour—not then, not now. “All-American Girl” was cancelled after one season. (It should be noted, though that Cho and other Asian cast members were also foiled by the show’s producers, who famously asked Cho to lose weight because her face was too round.) Similarly, “Outsourced” should be shown the door. Not because I want any of those excellent Indian actors to lose their hard-won jobs. And certainly not because I don’t want to see Indians and other Asians on prime time TV, but because I want to see better representations of Indians on prime time. Instead, give me more of Mindy Kaling as Dunder-Mifflin uber-ditz Kelly Kapoor in “The Office,” another Aziz Ansari as unlikely romeo Tom Haverford in “Parks and Rec,” and an extra helping of dude-errific stoners John Cho and Kal Penn from “Harold and Kumar.” Comedy that subverts every stereotype, and needles those who refuse to relinquish them? Now that’s funny.