OP credits go to Admiralakbar1

Salt and Pepper is meant to be an Odd Couple with two particular archetypes: a white character who is straight-laced, usually something of a nebbish, and a nonwhite character who is more streetwise, hotheaded, and outgoing. However, it's undergone some Trope Decay and just used to describe any partnership or relationship between a white and nonwhite character. Looking at the wick check:

• 6% were played straight
• 16% were a subversion, inversion, or some other kind of multiracial Odd Couple
• 66% were missing some or all necessary context—not specifying the characters' races and/or their personality types
• 12% were potholes, irrelevant, or outright stated "these characters aren't an Odd Couple"

Suggestion: Tighten the scope and remove all cases that don't exhbit noticeable personality contrast. Possibly disambig the deliberate subversion/inversion (straight-edge black character, gung-ho white character) if need be.

Wick check:

Edited by Berrenta on Nov 29th 2023 at 8:22:17 AM

~Admiralakbar1

Do we even need this trope? We already have Odd Couple and I'm not sure what the race-based differentiation really adds besides unnecessary restrictions.

ETA: We also have Hair-Contrast Duo to cover the broader concept for "contrasting appearance indicates contrasting personalities".

Edited by Adept on Aug 14th 2023 at 4:49:59 PM

i agree with this

i have definitely seen the normal uptight white guy + streetwise/fun black guy combo, it was a thing, particularly in the 80s.

Im also a little confused why the op defines this as white + nonwite, when the definition specifically is about white + black, with a single mention of a related variation involving white + hispanic. any nonwhite character would not count for this definition

Edited by Tremmor19 on Aug 14th 2023 at 6:45:11 AM

I suspect this can be disambiguated between Odd Couple and Token Black Friend.

And it would appear the bug that causes my posts to display twice has now spread to the forum.

Edited by VampireBuddha on Aug 14th 2023 at 1:36:43 PM

How would Token Black Friend be a good disambiguating candidate? The white character might have other, unmentioned Black friends.

x4: I mainly just mentioned "nonwhite" instead of black because there were a few examples with other races in there and it's not worth disambiguating into a separate trope. If we agree to tighten up the scope, the nonwhite-but-nonblack examples should probably shifted over to Odd Couple.

And I'm with verysunshine on this; IMO, Token Black Friend carries the connotation that they're supporting characters to a white protagonist, when in a lot of the examples the white and black characters are of equal importance to the plot.

Edited by Admiralakbar1 on Aug 14th 2023 at 9:51:15 AM

Again, what does the specific white + black pairing add to the Odd Couple, Red Oni, Blue Oni dynamic? Why would it be a more noteworthy subtrope than any other white + nonwhite pairing that otherwise exhibit the exact same dynamic?

If we're disambiguating, another option is Foil.

We have plenty of examples where a demographic difference (gender, race, etc.) is a notable aspect of the Odd Couple's differences, like Rookie Male, Experienced Female and Irishman and a Jew, so it's not as if this is the only such case.

If you want specific and unique aspects, the biggest difference is that the white guy comes from a majority background and a stable upbringing, while the black guy comes from a poor, marginalized background, and their differences in attitude reflect that. The black guy is more streetwise, laissez-faire, and willing to bend the rules; he may be a current or former criminal. The white guy, meanwhile, is far more normative (possibly to the point of neuroticism), believes in the sanctity of rules, and is almost painfully out of touch with black culture. In terms of cultural context, their prominence (especially in Buddy Cop movies) is attributed to the decline of one-screen theaters, the decline of Blaxploitation, and the failure of big-budget black-led films like The Wiz convinced studios that there was no future in black-majority films, so the conventional wisdom became that any movie with a black star also needed a white star to appeal to white America.

Yeah, setting up a constrast between an uptight white guy and a freewheeling black guy who have to work together is definitely a distinct thing, particularly in 80s movies. I think the name isn't doing it any favors though, since it implies any duo consisting of a white and black person, and that's likely contributing to the misuse. I think this could be salvaged on the TLP with a new name + example gathering, but unless/until that's done I'll support redirecting to Odd Couple. As others have said, I don't think disambiguation between that and Token Black Friend works since the dynamics are much different.

Not favoring Odd Couple because I think it's too broad and Salt and Pepper's concept is too deliberate to be The Same, but More Specific. The name is funny, but is very unclear.

See, you say it's deliberate but the wick check only has 3 correct examples and one of them wouldn't even be correct if we limit it to straight-laced, nerdy, white leads + wise cracking / streetwise / cool black guy duos, since the non-white character is Ghandi.

Though Token Black Friend is broader than this and I don't support a disambig (especially when we can redirect/merge), I think the point is that the classic idea of the token black friend is already that of a wisecracking and a comedic sidekick to a White Male Lead (and if it's a white women, then it's Sassy Black Woman, which has the same traits).

Even if we decide for a tightened definition, there isn't enough correct examples to rework the page and it'd likely have to go through the TLP

Edited by amathieu13 on Aug 14th 2023 at 3:29:23 PM

Not having enough good examples would ruin it, yes.

I do agree the concept itself is a distinct "thing" we may be able to revive through a TLP effort (with a better name), but also that the current state of this is unsalvageable as-is.

I do want to weigh in on an earlier point mentioned briefly, which is that Hair-Contrast Duo covers the "broader" idea of "contrasting appearance indicates contrasting personalities". That's not really true, because it's only for hair contrast as far as I'm aware, not for other forms of "contrasting appearance means contrasting personalities". In fact, we may have enough separate forms of it to warrant a supertrope, which could potentially include some of the Salt and Pepper misuse.

Fine with TLP-ing the "thing" this is, since it's not currently salvageable.

Sending it to yard is reasonable

I concur re: scrap and TLP a new trope. Toward that end, I made a list of examples from the original page that could be imported to the new trope (maybe with a little polish): Sandbox.Salt And Pepper Salvage Examples.

Just curious, what's the common procedure for this sort of thing, kill/redirect the old trope before launching the TLP, or wait for the TLP to launch first?

Edited by Admiralakbar1 on Aug 14th 2023 at 3:32:59 PM

Let's disambiguate and Yard since there are so few correct examples.

Id like to see a little bit more about what the two-thirds of examples that are ZCE's were— it seems like the majority issue here is not necessarily misuse, but lack of context.

Edited by Tremmor19 on Aug 14th 2023 at 2:18:12 PM

The wick check is linked in the OP; you can judge the ZCE folder for yourself.

Technically with a trope like this ZCE are sometimes considered misuse because they don't include the necessary details that would make an example fit; examples that are just "Bob is black, Andy is white" (or worse, just "Bob and Andy"), are technically both a ZCE and misuse because it's impossible to know if they simply lack context or have no extra context to give.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 14th 2023 at 2:21:01 PM

Yea, looking through them, I retract my objection, these examples are terrible. It's probably best to restart the trope

I'd like to point out that when a wick check is required, the wick check must be publicly viewable, so there won't ever be a time when you can't look at the wick check yourself.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 15th 2023 at 2:40:47 PM