Malcolm-Jamal Warner and the Lessons of Theo Huxtable

A number of hours after the information of Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s loss of life started to unfold, one in all my closest associates known as me. I knew earlier than I picked up that he needed to speak about Warner. We commiserated in low, disbelieving voices. This buddy and I weren’t raised underneath an identical circumstances, however we’d each felt the spectre of “The Cosby Present” ’s Theo Huxtable—simply Warner’s most well-known function—hovering over the recollections of our childhoods. Theo was humorous, cool, affable, assured round adults, typically charmingly sneaky, a little bit of a trickster. He was all the time stepping into one thing. He had a troublemaking buddy named Walter, whom all people known as Cockroach. The 2 boys got here up with a reasonably corny rap to assist them perceive Shakespeare, which Theo initially thought “wasn’t even written in English.” Nice Caesar’s ghost! When he tousled together with his girlfriend Justine, he requested his dad for recommendation and ended up studying tips on how to sing the blues. His room was a godforsaken mess.Theo’s dad and mom had been spectacular Black professionals who lived in an impossibly giant Brooklyn brownstone, and generally he felt—and boldly expressed—the pressure of the expectations that adopted. Within the very first episode of “The Cosby Present,” Theo’s in deep trouble due to his lacklustre grades. Theo, preventing again, provides a protracted, impassioned speech about how, regardless of the fabric successes of his dad and mom—Heathcliff (Invoice Cosby) is a physician, Clair (Phylicia Rashad) a lawyer—he merely needs to be like “common individuals.” You already know, drive a truck, open a fuel station, get his fingers soiled, and in any other case embrace a extra tactile, grounded way of life. There’s life past brownstones.The speech performs like a second of uncommon adolescent knowledge, a courageous scolding for an élitist dad. All the child needed, classroom efficiency however, was the love and straightforward acceptance of his people.Then his father bursts the nice and cozy and fuzzy bubble. “Theo, that’s the dumbest factor I’ve ever heard in my life,” the physician bellows. “No surprise you get D’s in all the pieces!” His level is, Yeah, we love you, however, so long as you reside right here, you’ll work as laborious as you’ll be able to and maintain your requirements excessive.The remainder of Theo’s story, throughout the eight years of “The Cosby Present” ’s run, unfolds like a vindication of that concept. He’s ultimately identified as having dyslexia, which explains his lifelong struggles within the classroom. Then he goes off to N.Y.U., and later presides over a rowdy after-school program for teenagers much less privileged than himself, typically cajoling them with tough-love lectures fairly just like those he’d obtained from his mother and pa.He was the meritocratic Black boy par excellence. His life story was what the civil-rights motion was imagined to have gained. He was an excellent child, who ended up utilizing his benefits in life to provide a hand to others. He’d persevered. Each time I’d felt, rising up, that I used to be letting my mom down, I advised my buddy, the sensation of disgrace had typically been accompanied by a nagging suspicion that she wished I might be a bit extra like Theo.You may say all of this in one other approach: Theo Huxtable was a properly realized character but additionally a lofty superb. What he meant was an excessive amount of for any actual particular person to hold round. Malcolm-Jamal Warner appeared miraculously in a position to pull it off. He’d been well-known and extremely seen at an alarmingly younger age, however, in contrast to many different former little one stars, he by no means appeared to really feel a lot rancor in regards to the expertise, or resentment about lugging pure-minded Theo round with him for the remainder of his life.When he performed roles in exhibits like “Fits,” “The Resident,” and “Malcolm and Eddie,” you couldn’t assist however take into consideration Theo. However that wasn’t a foul factor: it solely meant that the archetype that the sooner character had prodded into being was now commonplace in all types of representations of actuality—that Theo had executed the impossibly tough cultural work of affixing a face upon a brand new, then abruptly ubiquitous, form of particular person.Warner helped this course of alongside by all the time comporting himself with an ambassadorial cheer. He knew what he meant. One among “The Cosby Present” ’s unstated assertions—now way more controversial than within the eighties, when the present premièred—was that polished private presentation was a part of a Black man’s arsenal of instruments to outlive an unpredictable world. In case you may flip issues into laughter, ashes into magnificence, misdirections into alternatives to study, all whereas remaining a credit score to your race, that was success. In all probability with out which means to, Warner supported that argument merely by seeming like he’d be enjoyable to satisfy. He was nice at enjoying Theo, maybe as a result of he was genuinely a Theo at coronary heart.Just lately, I used to be hanging out with some people who find themselves youthful than I’m by at the very least a decade and subsequently weren’t raised on the Huxtables—it’s all the time a shock when I’m reminded that there are rent-paying Black adults to whom this description applies. I made a reference that no person understood. I stated the phrases “Gordon Gartrelle” and watched my buddies’ faces go clean. Nothing!The reference is to a different episode in “The Cosby Present” ’s first season. Theo needs to impress a date—the child is persistently lady loopy, one more reason to narrate—and enlists his sister Denise, performed by Lisa Bonet, to make for him a knockoff of a shirt by a well-liked designer of the day, Gordon Gartrelle. Denise performs it off like the duty is not any huge deal; she may do it in her sleep. However, when Theo comes again downstairs sporting the shiny blue-and-gold shirt, all hell breaks free. The sleeves are mismatched in size, the shoulders are off-kilter, the collar seems to be like a clown’s. Theo is hilariously enraged. Warner is sensible: he stomps and rolls his eyes, seems to be genuinely able to cry, appears to be visualizing his entire teen-age popularity gone up in unstoppable flames. The shirt is so terrible and Warner’s face so Pagliaccian in depth that the second resembles one thing lifted from “I Love Lucy.”Then one thing great occurs. His date exhibits up and likes the shirt. Theo, instinctively, performs alongside, acts like he’s found the freshest new model, goes out, has a ball. I feel guys my age love this scene as a result of it quantities to a mantra: maintain improvising and one thing respectable would possibly simply occur. Each time I say “Gordon Gartrelle,” I’m speaking a couple of comeback victory.You develop up and find yourself figuring out higher. Generally a loss is only a loss, and youthful failures can’t all the time be redeemed by a captivating outlook on life. An interesting exterior can’t all the time keep at bay the storm. Generally the man who performs your wisecracking dad finally ends up being a sinister creep. Even a seemingly invincible particular person like Malcolm-Jamal Warner can die effectively earlier than his time.One of many factors of the household sitcom is that these details don’t all the time matter. Among the harder stuff can wait. Perhaps the unfair burden of the child who performs a job in that world is that, when he grows up, individuals maintain searching for that heartwarming spark in his eyes. In Might, Warner put out a video on Instagram. All he needed you to know is that, if you concentrate on it, there’s all the time a purpose to smile. ♦