Salt And Pepper - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Ebony And Ivory

A variation on the Odd Couple, involving a white person and a black person. Usually, the white person is a strait-laced by-the-book type, while the black person is a funky, urban type who doesn't have much respect for authority. Most commonly, they're cops, assigned as partners after their old partners die/get disgusted and walk away. Generally, the two make a fairly good team if they can work out the personality clashes, with the strengths of one covering for the weaknesses of the other.

Salt And Pepper seems to be becoming subverted more often today due to increased racial awareness, so that it is the white person who is a bit stupid (sometimes to Ralph Wiggum proportions), and the black person is smart, savvy, and always the one to come up with a solution (occasionally to the point of being a Mary Sue). Another common subversion is for the black guy to be uptight and the white guy to be relaxed.

This may be more common

in the movies (Lethal Weapon, Die Hard 3) than on TV, where shows often seem more segregated.

Examples

The Trope Namer is 1968 movie "Salt and Pepper", starring Peter Lawford (as Christopher Pepper) and Sammy Davis Jr (as Charles Salt).
Miami Vice's Crockett and Tubbs would belong to this trope if they weren't both cool.
- The show also had another occasional salt & pepper combination in Ethnic Scrappies Izzy (hispanic) and Noogie (black), both of whom were two of the worst Jive Turkeys ever to appear on the screen. Possibly their worst moment was when they shared an A Day In The Limelight episode with Those Two Guys Switek and Zito, causing the Scrappy-o-Meter to go off the scale.
- Not to mention the heroes' Distaff Counterparts, Gina and Trudy (also hispanic and black).
Bakersfield PD
The seasons of Law And Order featuring Briscoe and Green. And then Fontana and Green. And now Lupo and Bernard.
The seasons of Law And Order: Special Victims Unit featuring Munch and Jefferies or Munch and Tutola.
Angel's Wes and Gunn, who notably reversed roles during the show's run. Wes started out as a strait-laced, tightly-wound British stereotype and evolved into a brooding, morally ambiguous badass, while Gunn started out running a vampire-hunting street gang but later, thanks to some Applied Phlebotinum, became a sharp-suited lawyer.
I Spy, although as with Miami Vice, they're both equally cool.
A Mad TV sketch spoofed this trope in a bit called "Night and Day", about a male black cop forced to partner with an albino woman. They learn to work together while taking cover in the villain's lair, conveniently fronted by a blackboard and whiteboard factory.
On The Simpsons, there are two Salt And Pepper pairs — Lenny and Carl, and Lou and Eddie. Though none of them seem to be funky or by the book; they're more "barely competent" and "not that bright all around".
- Subverted with Lenny and Carl, in that Lenny is a loser and Carl seems to have it more in control.
- The Simpsons also had another pair on the show within a show "Police Cops", they started
In WWE, The World's Greatest Tag Team. A subversion in that Shelton Benjamin (the black one) is the relatively straight one (though he's still an insufferable self-centered ass), and Charlie Haas (the white one) is a veritable Jive Turkey (to quote Rory, one of the Highlanders, "I didn't know Charlie Haas was black!").
Agents J and K, from the Men In Black movies and animated series.
- With the occasional lampshade hanging, such as J giving their names as "Mr. Black and Mr. White"
Parodied in Futurama, with a Jive Turkey robot cop, partnered to a white human.
Further subversion in the Lethal Weapon series: the by-the-book (and black) Roger Murtaugh is nearing retirement from the police force, while new partner Martin Riggs is the titular lethal weapon.
- Seven did the same.
Parodied when one episode of Clone High involved the Gandhi clone and the George Washington Carver clone making a buddy cop movie, in which they played strait-laced, Harvard-educated Leon Black (Carver) and Tandoori Jones (Gandhi), "...a typical Indian cop who plays by his own rules: none! Together they are Black and Tan!"
The film Bon Cop Bad Cop put a Canadian twist on it, with a by-the-book Anglophone cop from Toronto teamed up with a rough-edged Francophone cop from Montreal.
Displayed in Rush Hour, except with the white character replaced by a Chinese character (Jackie Chan).
Numbers 2 and 5 of Codename Kids Next Door; though 5 is general the street-wise and straight one, with 2 largely being a book-smart wannabe.
Parodied in a Show Within A Show during Major League 2 called Black Hammer, White Lightning, with a pair of Salt And Pepper-ish Rambo wannabes. Featured such such Witty Banter as this:
Black Hammer: Mine fell harder!
White Lightning: But mine were deader!
Reversed memorably on Hill Street Blues, with the rational, mild-mannered black cop Bobby Hill (played by Michael Warren) teamed with loud, white, redneck Andy Renko (Charles Haid.) These uniformed patrol officers were shot and presumed dead in the 1980 pilot episode, but the charismatic pairing appealed to both the producers and audience. Hill and Renko returned to duty from a prolonged hospitalization in time for the first season of Hill Street Blues and were a mainstay of the series throughout its run.
A 2006 series of Twinings tea commercials in the UK featured the incredibly English Stephen Fry (the "face" of Twinings since 2005) running a tea shop with a Jive Turkey named Tyrone, who suggested the Earl Grey slogan could be "Feel the zing in your ding-a-ling!"
Jack Cates and Reggie Hammond in the movie 48 HRS.
Iron Fist (white martial arts master raised in an other-dimensional city) and Power Man (wrongfully accused black ex-con living in Times Square and freelancing as a superhero) in the Marvel comic Heroes For Hire. Both were created in the '70s during the martial arts and blacksploitation crazes. Best Odd Couple ever.
Blood Plus pairs thin, ultraserious, white David with fat, easygoing, black Lewis.
- This also features a potential inversion/subversion with the reserved and serious (black) James and the flamboyant and affectionate (white) Nathan. Both are Diva's Chevaliers, but they never actually work together in battle. Still, if all the touching and flirting is anything to go by, Nathan certainly wants them to be an Odd Couple, If You Know What I Mean.
Subverted in the movie Amos and Andrew, with Samuel L Jackson as uptight Andrew and Nicolas Cage as crazy criminal Amos.
Psych's main characters are the laid-back, street-smart white Shawn and his uptight, eminently nerdy black partner Gus. This was even played upon in a commercial for the show, where they performed "Ebony and Ivory" together. Also, the "Black and Tan" episode.
Tenspeed & Brownshoe a 1980 Stephen Cannell creation starring Jeff Goldblum as Lionel Whitney, a karate-chopping ex-stockbroker private-eye wanna-be that takes all his inspiration and advice from Mark Savage, a fictional character in a series of 40's style detective novels (Stephen Cannel's photograph appeared on the dust jackets as the author of the books). Thrown together in the pilot episode with his co-star, Ben Vereen, playing E.L. Turner a street-wise hustler and con-man, in a caper after E.L. steals a million dollars from the mob, which the mob had gotten by fencing Nazi diamonds. This gets both the mob and the Nazis after him and a confused Lionel, who is about to be married, and whom both groups believe to be E.L.'s partner. 14 episodes were made and this was Jeff Goldblum's only major television role...
Justice League features the subversion with uptight ex-marine John Stewart/Green Lantern paired up with goofball Flash
Predating most of these examples and the buddy-cop formula were the pairings of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. A key supporting role for Pryor in 1976's Silver Streak (Wilder's lead character is forced to team up with him) was so successful that 1980's Stir Crazy was an out-and-out buddy film. Two more team-ups came in the early 1990s.
Robin Hood and Azeem in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves may qualify.
Detritus and Cuddy (and later Littlebottom) in Discworld.
A funny parody had Larry Wilmore discussing this trope on The Daily Show in regards to Barack Obama's search for a vice presidential running mate. Film clips illustrated how over the years black leads have been teamed up with cops (48 Hrs.), nerdy guys (White Men Can't Jump), dogs (I Am Legend), "Gene Wilder...Gene Wilder...Gene Wilder...It was a different time." This leads into a further discussion of the Magical Negro trope (as in The Green Mile, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and Kazaam) as it would apply to Obama.
- Come ON: Obama, Biden: Biden being, well... Biden we have a very nice real life inversion of the trope
Parodied beautifully in the Cleopatra Schwartz segment of Kentucky Fried Movie, with the titular black woman (an over-the-top action hero) married to a mild-mannered Hassidic Jew.
Sheriff Bart (black) and the Waco Kid (white) in Blazing Saddles.
Running Scared (1986), with CowboyCops Hughes and Costanzo.
Detective Virgil Tibbs and Sheriff Bill Gillespie from In The Heat Of The Night, both the 1967 movie and it's 1988 TV show.
The first three series of Teachers had a variation with Brian, who was white, and Kurt, who was Asian. Kurt was, usually, more intelligent, although Brian seemed to 'wear the pants', probably because he was a lot taller. When they were Jonas Quinned in the fourth series, we got Damien, who was black, and Ben, who was white, although Damien was Brian's Jonas Quinn while Ben was Kurt's, although with the slight difference that Damien was perhaps more intelligent than Ben. Not that it really mattered in the end.
Although Red Dwarf is set in the far future where contemporary notions of race may not apply, the extremely uptight Rimmer (played by white British actor Chris Barrie) and the laid-back, slobby Lister (played by half-West-Indian Brit Craig Charles) fulfil this trope. (You could probably also throw in Holly and the Cat.)
- Try contemporary notions of species.
Reversed in The Man, featuring all-business Samuel L. Jackson opposite trying-too-hard-to-be-cool-and-failing-horribly Eugene Levy, and used straight in two Queen Latifah movies: Taxi, opposite Jimmy Fallon, and Bringing Down the House, opposite Steve Martin.
This troper thinks Col. Jack O'Neill and Teal'c are a good example from Stargate SG 1
- "Indeed."
Roommates black Toni Chandler (Chaka) and white Nikki Reilly (Fey) in the Whateley Universe. Chaka is also way more relaxed about their mutual problem, while Fey is wound tight enough that she accidentally pops out hobgoblins regularly.
Zip and Alister in Tomb Raider: Legend.
Third Watch. Officers Davis and Sully. Also an example of a Vet/Rookie pair.
Jack and Sky from Power Rangers SPD are something of an example here. The black guy's a rebel/former street crook, the white guy's excruciatingly by the book in comparison (one episode had him "letting his hair down" in a birthday party setting by unbuttoning the top button of his uniform collar). They're also cops, and frequently have to work together. Given that it's Power Rangers, it goes a step further with the red/blue motif although it's still important to note that there are three other Rangers on the team.
Phil and Lem on Better Off Ted. Lampshaded in one episode, when Ted was using salt and pepper shakers to represent them. They were at first confused about which one was which, but then Lem (the black one) decided he was pepper because he was spicy. Phil agreed that he was "salty, like a sea captain.
Concession skewered this with a fake advertisement.
Turk and J.D. from Scrubs
- There's also Turner and Hooch (a black and white surgeon duo brought together by Turk and J.D. for the pun on their names) and a Cafe con Leche pairing in Elliot and Carla.
Detective Leo Banks and Detective Eric Delahoy in The Unusuals - basically Lethal Weapon-lite
- Also a Cafe con Leche in Detective Henry Cole and Detective Allison Beaumont
Occasionally Jack Carter and Henry Deacon on Eureka sometimes Allison fills in the pepper. His defacto pairing with Jo Lupo also gives us a Cafe con Leche
White Chris Stevens and his black half-brother Bernard on Northern Exposure. The hook being that they are pretty much exactly the same guy, right down to being born on the same day. One episode even revolves around Bernard beginning a relationship with one of Chris's ex-lovers - and she can't detect any difference between them in bed.