Take two rich American cultures, Jewish and black, with a shared legacy of being stereotyped and oppressed. Add a real-life couple who purport to represent those cultures as they march toward marriage and a life together. Throw in opinionated family, well-meaning friends and a hint of humor. Bring in the intervening eye of a reality-TV camera, and you’ve got yourself a hit “docu-sitcom” — right?
Maybe, depending on your taste. “Kosher Soul,” which premiered this week on Lifetime and airs at 10 p.m. Wednesdays, brings these ingredients together, mining the inevitable moments of cultural friction for comedy as well as insight into human relationships. The moral quandaries and cultural challenges are addressed honestly but not always successfully.
He is O’Neal McKnight, a musician and standup working L.A.’s black comedy circuit. She is Miriam Sternoff, a “sassy” Jewish celebrity stylist. They’re in love, they’re engaged, they’re going to get married and have babies (after the awesome beachside honeymoon). And look, see how different they are?
The families are at first scandalized. Miriam’s mom is so alarmed at the prospect of a mixed marriage that her initial response is to “push it away.” Luckily for his future mother-in-law, O’Neal is converting to Judaism, so after that point, any hang-ups will be just cultural, yes?
Ah, the conversion. At one point O’Neal relates a conversation with his grandmother about the process: “How’s it going being a Jew?” she asks. “Are you in a cult?”
There are also a few efforts to wring comedy out of the adult brit — really, just a pricking of the anatomy in question and drawing a little blood, we are told — but it’s a bit of a muddle, with a reality-show approach that doesn’t quite cross into sitcom. There’s a chummy conversation in the car about circumcision between O’Neal and his best friend, who discuss the problem of letting a white man with a blade take hold of your black member. There are some snippets of visits to mohels, in which the aforementioned blade and a serious Old Testament beard are variously brandished.
Yet most of these scenes pass by in something of a bland procession. The wit is often shy of sparkling. The couple represent their differences of gender and ethnicity in trivial ways that short-circuit the viewer’s desire for comedy or poignancy. Miriam is cranky and demanding rather than sarcastic and engaging, her moments of B-girl gusto and bubbly laughter visibly tamped down by a prim severity. O’Neal is immature and sophomoric rather than playful and straight-shooting, his trash talk merely trashy rather than observant or pointed.
Considering the depth and history of both cultures, the values in play are surprisingly superficial. She wants a honeymoon by the beach, he is thinking Disneyland, but he’ll give her Greece or St. Bart’s if she’ll get blinged out and spend $1,300 on a grill — a fitted gold plate worn rapper-style over her teeth.
Moments treated with a similarly light touch include the inevitable discussion of black men and booty size, slavery (the Holocaust is mostly given a pass), soul food (fried catfish, his grandma’s specialty, is way not kosher) and a trip to Canter’s Deli with O’Neal’s Stetson-wearing pal Chico.
The big pre-wedding epiphany — and the solution to the ceremony’s seating-chart dilemma, which was shaping up into a segregationist worst-case scenario with all-white “intellectual” tables and all-black “cool” tables — is when Chico buys a black-and-white cookie at the Canter’s bakery counter. Watching Chico tear into the treat, O’Neal realizes they should just throw the seating chart out and let the wedding be one big cookie.
“Black and white cookie,” Miriam says, reveling in the daring nature of his plan. “I’m into it.”
“Kosher Soul,” like that cookie, is not very deep. And the frosting is cheap. If you want more than a snack, you might have to look elsewhere.