The White Shadow is running on YES

I been spending a lot of time out in Cali lately so I have to ask - has this been going on for a while or did it just start? I was channel surfing last night and almost gave myself whiplash doing a double take when I came to the YES network and saw my man Ken Reeves droppin knowledge on his Carver crew.

The episode they're currently showing is not one of the greats - Collins, a powder-blonde white boy from the rich part of town transfers in to Carver and joins the team. Soon everyone finds out that he left his old school because he's gay and he was getting teased about it all the time and his pops wanted to send him somewhere to toughen him up. Collins and Salami mix it up at one point, which brings the whole thing to a head, prompting Reeves to make a ridiculous speech to the team about homosexuality which seems to basically boil down to "I don't like it any more than you do, but... well, are sure he's gay? are ya? maybe he isn't! ya ever think of that ya bums..." Hey, it was 1979. Will and Grace was a long way off.

No doo-wop shower singing scenes in this episode, no Thorpe in the whole show and very little Coolidge, and a weepy after-school-special speech at the end from Vice Principal Buchanan to the gay dude about how when she was a kid her brothers got teased about being black and they didn't like it either. On the other hand, there's some vintage Heyward, who (and no offense to all you Thorpe-ites and Coolidge-ians out there) was always my favorite character on the show. Coolest 'fro, and then just coolest period, with his quiet air of ladyliciousness and inner menace (wait a minute... maybe I'M gay...). Reeves goes to talk to him about the situation with Collins and Heyward breaks it down for him in no uncertain terms about how things are down in the hood. "It all comes down to your rep," he says, and drops into a very credible boxing stance in case Reeves has misunderstood him. No Mas all the way.

This particular episode next airs on YES at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, so get your DVR's humming and watch that shit. We'll be tracking every new episode as it runs here at No Mas and holding discussion groups and contests and bake sales and whatnot. Look, it's the freakin White Shadow. In other words, hands down the greatest TV show ever.