TV Eye

Jonny Zero couldn’t steal a little black dress from the store, even if his cute little kid were shitting her pants. Why?

I saw two seemingly unrelated things on TV that set my mind ablaze last week. The first was a commercial for toddlers' disposable underwear. The second was the series premiere of Jonny Zero on Fox.

In the commercial, a young woman is trying on clothes in a department store when her young child urgently announces she has "to go potty." In the next scene, the mother hurriedly tows her child from the store, stocking-footed and with the tags of the dress she was trying on visible. When the mother and child pass from the store into the mall, the alarm sounds. But they don't stop. The next scene is the mother and child joining an already long line outside the restroom.

The first time I saw this commercial, I was struck. How come that woman wasn't lying facedown, handcuffed, with a knee in her back, her child wailing (and soiled) in the background?

I waited for the end of the commercial to see if a joke would be made of the mother's shoplifting. There wasn't. Instead, there was a closing shot of the gleeful mother and child, apparently re-creating the pietã moment: mother, child, and dry underwear. How joyous!

But I wasn't feeling it.

This representation of an "every woman" (child-bearing, white, and middle class) leaving a store with "stolen" merchandise without any repercussions is jaw-dropping to this nonwhite, non-middle-class woman who has been shadowed by perceptively nervous salesclerks or asked in a skeptical tone, "Do you need help?"

Unintentionally, the commercial offers a snapshot of what many of us know. The world is (at the very least) a bifurcated place. You might see an innocuous commercial about a mother whose child's bodily functions become a manageable nuisance (thanks to the product). I see a woman who lives in a world where there is no presumption of guilt, even when she leaves the store with unpaid merchandise. That's a lovely world, but not the one I've been privy to.

Then, I saw Jonny Zero. Franky G (The Italian Job, Wonderland) stars as Jonny Calvo, an ex-con released after serving four years for manslaughter. "Jonny Zero" is the nickname his former thug boss uses to browbeat him into rejoining his fold, but the nickname also refers to where Jonny is at the start of the series. Having served his time and being appropriately remorseful for his deed, he seeks redemption. He longs to reunite with his son, reconcile with his family, and begin anew. This is how it's supposed to work. A crime is repaid with separation from society, after which, all is forgiven. Yet, that is not quite how it works in a culture where doing time, regardless of the circumstances, is a permanent brand. Once convicted, always convicted.

So, what to make of this peculiar dichotomy? On one side of the coin, a woman clearly (though accidentally) shoplifts. Her crime is that she gave her baby too much fluid for a long shopping day. She's "let off" for good behavior for buying the product in question (and I suppose she gets to keep the little black dress she wore out of the store, as well). On the other side is the fictional ex-con Jonny Calvo, who gets sucked back into "the life," not only by the creepy thug, but also by an even creepier federal agent who wants Jonny to work undercover, or else. (The "or else what?" is not entirely clear in the premiere episode.)

What this says to me is that there are some people who make bad choices but are forgiven by virtue of their apparent position and privilege and there are others who are destined to make bad choices that will haunt them for life. We see one image of an affluent white woman in a commercial that doesn't need to bother with the small detail of her walking out with a dress she didn't buy. We're supposed to assume her innocence in order to get to the nut of the matter: Buy this product! In Jonny Zero, we are bombarded with the details, all of the choices that place him – a brown, street-wise man – at the beginning of his uphill road to redemption. He may be tenacious, charming, and a little gullible, but forgivable? We'll just have to see.

Jonny Zero airs Friday nights at 8pm on Fox.