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Ennis Cosby's demise is a shocking violation, not only of basic notions of personal safety (changing a tire shouldn't be a death sentence, especially not in palmy suburbia) but of a modern metaphysical barrier as well. Bonds and affections nurtured by a TV show season after season for years should not be vulnerable to sudden disruption from outside the screen. I have plenty of friends who grew up with single parents--or double parents who didn't much like each other--for whom Bill Cosby's intact, warm TV household was a crucial refuge. Now it's gone. And no matter how the current story evolves, those reruns will be difficult to watch, those comforting memories tainted if not spoiled. When Ricky Nelson, America's TV son, died in a mysterious plane crash, rumors swirled that the child actor turned rock star had set the craft ablaze free-basing cocaine. Today's telecitizens like to view tragedies involving high-profile victims as either retributions for evil or sacrifices of perfect innocence, and it will be interesting to see what moral is drawn to deflect and ease the sting of this one.
Bill Cosby not only talked the talk of fatherhood, he walked the walk. Ennis Cosby was not a brat. He was a teacher. Now it's his father who'll have to be one. Bill Cosby has a new role as a model of loss, a paragon of violent bereavement. In Hollywood, privileged, unreal, incredible Hollywood, where imagination transforms reality, reality is taking the upper hand. It's as though the gods of drama have ordained that our entertainers must now act out America's most awful true-life conflicts, no longer just its escapist fantasies.