NBC sitcom airs provocative episode

The Carmichael Show is known for confronting controversial topics, so it’s not surprising that the NBC sitcom would dedicate an episode to the N-word and who has a right to say it.

But it may have surprised viewers tuning in Wednesday to hear the word aired six times — unedited — on broadcast television.

The show, now in its third season, is based on comedian and co-creator

Jerrod Carmichael’s family. Wednesday’s episode found Jerrod (Carmichael) celebrating his mother Cynthia’s birthday by securing a lastminute dinner reservation through Drew, a high school friend who coowns a restaurant. When Jerrod thanked his friend for the favour, Drew, who is white, replied: “Anything for you my n-----.”

Jerrod’s family was horrified, but he was nonchalant about the exchange: “Drew is my friend, that’s just how we talk,” he said. His family members and girlfriend shared their own experiences with the word and their varying opinions on whether white people should be allowed to say it.

Carmichael explained in a column for the Hollywood Reporter that his own family had varying opinions on who can say the word, writing that “I don’t want it to be used as a weapon. We have the power to dilute words and a lot of times, we use that in the wrong way. Donald Trump was called a racist and that should have been a strong accusation, but we use the word ‘racist’ so much . . . it doesn’t mean what it did.”

The Carmichael Show isn’t the first sitcom to tackle the N-word. ABC’s Blackish memorably confronted varying opinions around who can say the word in a 2015 episode that found a young Jack Johnson innocently dropping the word during a Kanye West-inspired performance at his elementary school talent show. In that case, ABC bleeped each instance of the word. The Washington Post