Colored Television

Jane’s agent, Honor, calls her and tells her that Josiah, the publisher, had described the novel as “Frankensteinian,” “an ungainly mishmash” (79). Honor agrees and suggests that Jane has done herself “a disfavor by writing about race again” (79). Lenny comes home from being at the park with the kids. He asks her what is for dinner. She tells him that her agent and publisher hated her book. He sympathizes with her and starts reheating macaroni and cheese. She thinks it’s for the kid’s dinner, but he starts eating it himself while watching Jaws. Despondent, Jane goes to Brett’s studio to reflect on her failure. She wonders if the chaos of the book is because she had an untreated concussion many years prior when she fell off a moving train. Jane throws away all the research she has accumulated in the studio and puts the finished manuscript in the drawer of Brett’s desk.

As she tidies the studio, she looks at a picture of Brett and his wife, Piper, on their wedding day. She sees herself in the background of the picture. Jane texts Brett. He tells her that now he is done with the zombie television show in Australia, he is going to work on a comedy about “mulattos.” She tells him that she has finished her novel, and he is proud of her. After their conversation, Jane thinks about how she had felt so superior to Brett and his friends at his wedding because Brett had given up on being a literary writer to work on television while she was still making “high art.”

Jane notices Brett’s agent’s business card on his desk. She writes Marianne Berkowitz, the agent. Jane lies and says Brett suggested Jane get in touch because she has a pitch to share with Marianne.

Jane meets with Marianne. Jane tells Marianne that she thinks television has more influence on culture than novels and pitches Marianne a comedy about “mulattos.” First, Marianne asks Jane if Brett isn’t also biracial. Jane says he is. Marianne replies, “Funny, with Brett, I never think about skin color” (96). Then, Marianne agrees to set up “generals” (general meetings) with producers about her pitch.

Driving home from the meeting, Jane thinks about the director of the writing program she and Brett had both attended, Dennis Mulholland. Dennis had taught a paint-by-numbers method to literary fiction. She wondered if this meeting was her “inciting incident.”

Jane goes into Lenny’s studio, where he is working on a large painting. He is “smirking, sarcastic” about her meeting with a Hollywood agent. They have sex on the floor of his studio. Afterward, Jane thinks about the protagonist of her novel, a “high-yellow” Hollywood actress who couldn’t get cast in a movie and subsequently died by suicide. Jane misses the character but also feels “glad she was dead” (101).

Jane meets with a Black television producer named Hampton Ford. His assistant, Layla, is a beautiful “Nigerian American Princess” (102). As they meet, Hampton eats his lunch. He tells Jane he liked her first book. Jane tells him she liked his most recent show, a race-swapped Diff’rent Strokes about a wealthy Black family adopting a poor white girl. He tells her it was “total network shlock” (106), and he wants to make something different. Jane tells him she wants to make a comedy about a “mulatto” family and their everyday lives. He asks to see a picture of her family; Jane suspects he wants to make sure she really is biracial and not pretending. She shows him a picture of her parents, herself, and her sister from 1978. Hampton, in turn, shows her a picture of his family. Although both he and his wife are Black, their daughter is a pale-skinned redhead. He comments on how his children will grow up to marry white people because they go to a wealthy white private school, and, over time, their family line will become increasingly white. He says he likes her idea.

Jane reflects on the Melungeons, a multi-racial mix of Indigenous Americans, Black people, and poor white people, who lived in the Cumberland Gap in Appalachia in the 19th century. They would lie about their origins to protect themselves. Sometimes, they would say they had Portuguese ancestry. Jane thinks about a scene from her novel where a Melungeon child is crying to his mother that he wants to go back to Portugal, a place to which he has never been.

Jane gets a call from Brett and doesn’t pick up.

Immediately after the meeting with Hampton, Jane felt excited. But two days later, the drudgery of motherhood is getting to her. While she makes dinner, Marianne calls and says Hampton wants to meet with her again. Jane tells Lenny she was speaking to “her agent.” Lenny mistakenly believes she means Honor, her literary agent. Jane doesn’t correct Lenny’s misunderstanding. Instead, she lies and tells him that Honor is calling with suggestions for how to improve the novel. She tells Lenny that she thinks writing fiction “feels bad for [her] mental health” (121), but he dismisses her concerns as “self-sabotag[e].” As they talk, Finn comes in and tells her that he smells something burning. Jane sees dinner has been ruined, and she almost cries.

That night, Jane has a dream that she has sex with Brett. In the dream, she realizes he is more than a friend and that “he was from the same land she was from, a region ancient and contested” (123). When Jane wakes up, she thinks there is a stranger in the house. Then, she realizes that it is just Lenny practicing his Japanese on the living room sofa.

Jane feels positive about her second meeting with Hampton. That morning, Finn had not complained when he was dropped off at kindergarten and it was raining, two rare occurrences she takes as a “good omen.” Jane had lied and told Lenny she was meeting with Hampton to “gather material” for her revisions to the novel.

Jane arrives at the office. Layla, Hampton’s assistant, introduces Jane to Topher, an office worker. Topher is a preppy white boy from Connecticut. Topher tells Jane he wanted to be a playwright, but he had attended a production program with Layla. Hampton had spoken to their class and then hired Layla and Topher after they graduated. Topher says he wishes he was a novelist. Layla tells Topher to get back to work and complains about how depressing he is.

Layla shows Jane to Hampton’s office, where he is meeting with a white network director, Bruce Borland. Bruce tells Jane he is looking forward to what they come up with. After Bruce leaves, Hampton tells Jane they need to brainstorm a solid pitch for the network. They come up with an idea for a comedy based on Jane’s family but idealized. In the show, “The Bunches” live in “Multicultural Mayberry” in a Craftsman house. Their friend, Reebee, “a Black lesbian spoken-word poet” (134), lives in the garage with her transgender child. Driving back from the meeting, Brett texts Jane, “we need to chat” (133). She lies that Finn is sick, and she will contact him later.