Just in time for Black History Month, this YouTube video mash-up between 'Friends' and - is it 'Sealab 2020'? - a cartoon provides a rap song about the egregious lack of color in the entire history of the sitcom 'Friends'.....
That computer did a pretty good job of analyzing the content of the series and extracting every example of a black person on 'Friends', didn't it?
Wrong, Buffalo Breath!
They forgot a character who, for me, was the most important black character in the whole history of 'Friends':
PHOEBE'S BABY DOCTOR!And why is she so important to me? Because the actress who played that role is my twin sister!
Well, okay. Not exactly, but she's one of my dearest friends, Shirley Jordan. Shirley is an actress who has garnered a lot of supporting roles in Toobworld over the years - among them 'ER', 'Shark', 'Better Off Ted', 'Desperate Housewives', 'Strong Medicine', and 'Boston Legal' & 'Ally McBeal'. (I combined those two characters into one.) Last year she was in "Munched", an acclaimed play in the Los Angeles area, and has an upcoming role in an episode of 'Friends With Benefits'.
I was able to combine all of her nameless medical roles into two characters who happened to be sisters. I'm even thinking she should receive the Birthday Honors List induction into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame. (I'm already in there myself, and I could use the company. Everybody else shuns me......)
So I just wanted to set the record straight and make sure Shirley Jordan got her due as a black person on 'Friends'.......BCnU!
NANCY HANKS LINCOLN
'Diff'rent Strokes' was his base, in which he appeared in 189 episodes during its run. The rest of the series listed were basically guest appearances:
'The Facts Of Life' was a spin-off featuring the former housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett, who was now working at a school for girls in upstate New York. In a two-part episode, Arnold came for a visit. 
"Remote Control Man", the episode of 'Amazing Stories' in which Arnold appeared, isn't part of the main Toobworld like the other TV shows listed. It took place in a TV dimension similar to the Trueniverse in one respect: they have the same TV shows we do. Arnold was just one of the TV characters summoned up by that magic remote control. Others included the Hulk, June Cleaver, The Face of 'The A-Team', and Ed McMahon, among many others. In effect, Arnold was pulled out of the main Toobworld and into this other dimension which is also shared by 'Hi Honey, I'm Home'. 
Gary Coleman appeared in a cameo on 'Married... With Children', but not as Arnold. In fact, his building code inspector was adamant that he was not Arnold Jackson and that he was not Gary Coleman of 'Diff'rent Strokes'. Because the show got mentioned, this is nothing more than a Zonk to bedevil my day!
With Hudson University, we can add 'The Cosby Show' and 'DeGrassi: The Next Generation' as two more shows with connections to that seat of learning. And those four shows, along with all of the 'Law & Order' dramas, share the same TV dimension: Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld.
But with 'Castle' and 'Blue Bloods', each of them had to be relegated to other TV dimensions. And they couldn't share one either. This is because both shows have different mayors for New York City who have appeared in episodes. 
I've stated in the past that the main Toobworld shares the same mayor as the NYC to be found in the Trueniverse. Currently, that's Mike Bloomberg. He's portrayed himself in episodes of '30 Rock', 'Law & Order', and in a Christmas TV movie with the Muppets. 
But for 'Blue Bloods', the mayor is named Russo and he's played by Bruce Altman as something of a thorn in the side of Commissioner Reagan. On 'Castle', he's a black man named Bill. Had Bill Thompson won the election vs. Bloomberg in 2009, we could have said that the series was set in the very near future and was not synchronous with the timeline of the real world. ('Castle' debuted in March of 2009.)
If the 'Primeval' temporal reboot also takes place in these two TV dimensions, we could consider them brought back into line with the timeline of Earth Prime-Time. But we'd only do that once the series have been cancelled. (That way, no more pesky fictional mayors can show up to ruin it all.) As is the case with a series like 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' with its fictional president, we in the Trueniverse audience will only be able to see the original timeline when watching reruns. But everything in those affected episodes will have been re-adjusted, so that Rick Castle had been friends with Mike Bloomberg, whose police commissioner would then be Frank Reagan.
Thank you, Arclight, for that theory of relateeveety discovery!
But for now, turning a blind eye to some of the more egregious Zonks, '30 Rock' and 'Lost' both exist in Earth Prime-Time. Somehow, Tracy learned about Charles Widmore - who, as a wealthy industrialist in the outside world, would have plenty of mentions in the news.
Susan Flannery was first seen - officially - as Stephanie in 1987 in the second episode of 'The Bold And The Beautiful'. But as the unnamed secretary for Lilly Bentley, she made one quick appearance in an episode of 'Burke's Law' ("Who Killed Harris Crown?") in 1963. By this point, Stephanie and Eric had been married for a few years and were adding to their brood with Thorne, Angela (now deceased), Kristen, and Felicia. 
With the strain on their finances because of their growing family, Stephanie wanted to make sure her dream of making it big could still be realized. So she went to John Douglas and asked her father for a major loan with which she and Eric founded their Forrester fashion firm. She quit her job as Lilly Bentley's secretary but may have used the contacts whom she met there to get the business off the ground.
Why would Henry quit that in order to work for Captain Burke? Age - and with it the diminishment of skills - could have been a factor.
It could also be that "Kato" was the surname for their family. In either of the two series, we never did learn what Henry's last name was.
When it comes to recastaways, Toobworld Central always gives a pass when it comes to the depiction of aging. Like Cary Elwes and Jon Voight as Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, or Levar Burton and John Amos as Kunte Kinte/Toby. So I've got no problem in the change in appearance from Buce Lee as Kato to Danny Kamekona as Henry.
O'Bviously, this only concerns the televersion of Green Hornet and Kato. The characters are true Multiversals - beginning with their radio program origins in 1936, branching out to comic books, prose, a movie serial in the 1940's and now the current movie in theatres. Toobworld needs to ignore all of those in order to limit the splainins for all of the recastaways, but in the Wold Newton Universe, Win Scott Eckert and his cohorts have done an excellent job melding them together.
Anyhoo, hopefully you'll find this theory of relateeveety to have some merit in linking 'Burke's Law' to 'The Green Hornet'.
She appeared twice as the fabled Anna Karenina, once in silent film, Love (1927), and again with Anna Karenina (1935), for which she received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She considered her 1936 performance as the courtesan Marguerite Gautier as her best performance and her role in Camille (1936) earned her a second Academy Award nomination.
In her retirement, during which she became increasingly reclusive, she lived in New York City. A 1986 Sidney Lumet film, Garbo Talks, reflected the continuing popular obsession with the star. Until the end of her life, Garbo-watching became a sport among the paparazzi and the media, but she remained elusive. She died in 1990 at the age of 84 from pneumonia and renal failure.
