VIDEO SATURDAY - BLACK TOOBWORLD

"What if you could find brand new worlds right here on Earth?

Where anything is possible.

Same planet, different dimension...."

Quinn Mallory

'Sliders'

Toobworld Central has run with that concept; it had to.  There were far too many Zonks found in various TV series which prevented them from sharing the same dimension with the majority of shows.  For instance, Earth Prime-Time could never hold 'The Walking Dead'.  (Although 'iZombie' is a possibility for inclusion so long as it's kept contained.  The same held true for 'True Blood' until the vampire "reality" got out of hand.)

Any TV show with a President of the United States different from the Real World got relegated to an alternate TV dimension.  Most TV series are going to make references to the current POTUS, either in plot points or as the butt of jokes.  So 'The West Wing', 'Commander-in-Chief', 'Agent X', 'Designated Survivor', 'Hail To The Chief', 'Nancy'..... all are shipped off to their own Toobworlds.  And the same goes for TV shows which remake earlier series or recast characters in new situations - this is especially true of Superman, who is spread out across the multiverse in a handful of TV shows.

So besides the main Toobworld of Earth Prime-Time, there are all of these other alternate Toobworlds - Toobworld2 and Toobworld3 (the Lands o' Remakes), the Tooniverse (all cartoons), Toobstage (dramatized theatrical plays), Skitlandia (where comedy sketches are put out to pasture), many international Toobworlds (where established characters known to speak English - Holmes & Watson, for example - instead are fluent in the native tongue of the country which produced the show and speak nothing but.  TV shows dubbed into those languages would be relegated to those worlds while the original remains in Earth Prime-Time.)  And then there are all the Comic Book Toobworlds to be found in the current spate of superhero shows on the CW.

One of these alternate Toobworlds, and the focus of Video Saturday today, is Black Toobworld.  It is the world in which old TV shows are remade with black actors now playing the parts.  It's not a very populous dimension so far and a movie from the Cineverse has been dragged into the mix to bolster the population, but based on that premise, we might assume that other TV shows are in there with all black characters, but we just haven't seen them yet - 'The Beverly Hillbillies', 'Rhoda', 'Batman', 'Gunsmoke', 'Marcus Welby, MD' and 'I Love Lucy', which I assume would now be titled 'I Love Lucille' (with BB King as a guest star?.)  And some of those shows would have token white characters instead of the black ones - Link from 'The Mod Squad' would be white, as would Alexander Scott from 'I Spy'.  (Speaking of Cosby, I'm sure all of those shows which did have predominately black casts would remain the same in Black Toobworld - 'The Cosby Show', 'The Jeffersons', and 'What's Happening?')

So let's take a look at the verified black remakes of TV shows which populate Black Toobworld......

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK

THE ODD COUPLE 

KOJAK

IRONSIDE

S.W.A.T.

And multi-dimensional demon Mr. Sweet visited Black Toobworld to infect the black version of a sitcom powerhouse with song.....

FRIENDS

Here's a case where the original premise was a movie, but which was first transformed into a short-lived TV series with Kevin Meaney before being absorbed into Black Toobworld:

UNCLE BUCK

A movie absconded directly from the Cineverse was relocated to Black Toobworld....

THE HONEYMOONERS

O'Bservation: One show not included in this mix is 'Sanford & Son', even though it was "Americanized" from the Britcom 'Steptoe & Son'.  Since the names of the characters were changed, unlike all the examples above, then both sets of characters can exist in the same Toobworld.

BCnU!