Message of BET shows gets lost in silliness

That’s tough to pull off, and a lot tougher on TV, where you lose the veneer of a renegade act and gain the imprimatur of a network. So when BET announced that it was making a series out of ‘‘Hot Ghetto Mess,’’ it’s not surprising that anger x ensued. Protesters complained that the network aimed at black viewers was about to air a minstrel show. State Farm and Home Depot pulled their ads. A few days ago, BET dropped the name altogether and started calling the show by its subtitle, ‘‘We Got To Do Better.’’

Producers have defended the show itself, saying it speaks in a language that 18-to-34-year-olds understand. Which might be a good argument if ‘‘We Got To Do Better,’’ which premiered Wednesday night, didn’t turn out to be deathly boring. But even if you accept the producers’ intentions as sincere, the show suffers in translation from the Internet to TV. It’s one thing to watch a three-minute video clip of somebody acting stupid. It’s another to have to sit through a half-hour of them.

Is it a minstrel show? Not exactly, since the clips seem divided almost evenly by race. (The guy who puts a condom over his head, then blows it up like a balloon? He’s white.) But it’s also hard to figure out what the show is trying to prove. Even the ‘‘Street Walkin’.’’ segments, in which comedian Sydney Castillo asks strangers such questions as ‘‘Who’s richer, Jay-Z or Bill Gates?’’ only repeats what Jay Leno regularly demonstrates on network TV: that ignorance knows no racial bounds.

Wednesday’s premiere also included a brief reminder of the existence of Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks, as well as some forced mini-lectures from host Charlie Murphy, a player in Comedy Central’s keen, controversial ‘‘Chappelle’s Show.’’ Standing in a parody of an upper-crust drawing room, he donned a smoking jacket and an ascot and declared, ‘‘Hopefully, you saw something here that will make you think twice about how you live.’’