Black sitcoms have long featured sincere and thoughtful arcs on a number of issues, including adoption, grief and racial profiling. But many shows have failed to deliver meaningful storylines about transgender characters. Shows such as The Jeffersons and The Parkers, for instance, have leaned on tired, transphobic tropes: the process of transitioning is typically reduced to a single operation that characters get off-screen; trans women are often outed by accident, the punchline in a joke about gender; or trans people are abandoned once a cisgender character who initially expressed romantic interest in them suddenly discovers their gender identity and bolts.
Across television programs, trans characters (usually played by cis actors) function as punchlines, villains or have no legitimate storyline to begin with. But Clean Slate, a new Prime Video series loosely based on the actor Laverne Cox’s upbringing, is an entertaining and wholehearted comedy following a once-estranged father and daughter who become reacquainted and grow together on new terms.
