The Desi Guy in Sitcoms

Years after Apu, there have been a string of desi guys who have shown up in supporting roles on sit-coms. Everyone remembers "Babu Bhatt" from Seinfeld (though I'm still trying to forget). I'm sure people can name their favorites (or crappiest), but I'll just do this quickly. After all, I'm sure some of the pop culture sites have probably covered this a million times:

1) Unhitched - Shaun Majumdar - I just watched a snip of this, and it was bad. The dude's accent sucked - I don't know if he was hamming it up to prove the point that he doesn't actually have an accent, but it was pretty bad. Though he was apparently a "pro" at getting the "O" when married, of course it was tied to "tantric" technique, which he then went on to teach another character. So he's a sex machine. That doesn't really inspire me to think his character is breaking any molds (reading that he's a doctor in the show doesn't help). I couldn't stand it anymore.

2) Aliens in America - Adhir Kalyan - when I first heard about this show's premise, foreign exchange student from Pakistan lives with a family in Wisconsin, I really expected the worst. I heard from somewhere that it wasn't that bad, and because "Unhitched" was so terrible (and I was coming off a really funny Simpsons), I decided to check this out a gain. I'm glad that I did. The show actually dealt with some issues of difference and understanding fairly well for a sit-com. I was pretty pleased - I thought it would be more of a gloss on Gene Yang's Chin-kee character (see the wonderful, American Born Chinese), but it was a little more layered than that. In a way that is simplistic (who's the target audience for this show, after all), it is still humanizing this kid and gives us something better than the b.s. thrown out every week in shows like 24 and the like. Hey, and there's a cover of "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding" on the show that features Salman Ahmad of Junoon. That's pretty cool. I actually thought the episode I watched was better than most of the "Little Mosque on the Prairie" stuff I watched earlier.

3) Weeds/30Rock - Maulik Pancholy - The roles are not specifically desi, and that's kind of cool, actually. His politics are good, and he's a funny actor. I really enjoyed seeing him on Weeds, and haven't seen an episode of 30Rock with him, but he's just a character, not a desi character, and that's refreshing.

I'm pretty sure that show with geeks or super geniuses and the female neighbor (I think it's called Big Bang Theory?) has a desi guy in it, wielding the protractor or some other nonsense, but I haven't watched more than a snip of the pilot.

Beyond the quick run-through of characters, I think it's an interesting comment on how the desi guy has become the new accessory in these shows. Is it the accent? Is it some residual glow from the "Harold and Kumar" phenomenon? I'm really not sure, but it's definitely become more prominent. "Aliens..." actually focuses on the character, while the other shows have the characters in much more supporting roles, but it's an interesting time to watch what evolves out of this for desi male actors. Will they graduate from the boxes that they're placed in at this point (or do we say "not playing a terrorist" = the second wave of desi men on the little screen?).

Regardless, I still think Mindy Kailing, of the office, is the funniest South Asian on American television. And she's writing a lot of the stuff herself!