Portside

Popular culture may be getting more diverse in terms of gender and skin color, but it's still mostly flat in presenting diverse human qualities and differences. Few characters play against type, which makes the exceptions all the more remarkable. Part of the power of characters playing against type is simply their insistence, humorous and without qualified explanation, of their existence. In other words, like most of comedy, its power is better experienced, not explained

In criticizing capitalism for mass consumption instead of exploitation, The Americans uses Soviet characters to valorize austerity.

The Knick joins HBO's Boardwalk Empire as a show that seems juiced by the wider range of plotlines and stories allowed by diversifying the cast.