TV writers use these stock characters to quickly communicate to the audience. In the late 1990s, there was a trend for screenwriters to add a gay stock character, which replaced the 1980s era's "African-American workplace pal" stock character. In the 1990s, a number of sit coms introduced gay stock characters, such as "Friends", "Rosanne", "Mad About You", and "Will & Grace", with the quality of the depictions being viewed as setting a new bar for onscreen LGB depiction. One challenge with the use of stock characters in TV shows is that, as with films, these stock characters can incorporate racial stereotypes, and "prejudicial and demeaning images". One concern raised with these gay stock characters is they tend to be shown as just advice-giving "sidekicks" who are not truly integrated into the narrative; as well, the gay character's life is not depicted, apart from their advice-giving interactions with the main characters. This also echoed the way that Black and Latino characters were used in 1980s and early 1990s shows: they were given a stock character role as a police chief, which in put them in a position of power, but then these characters were used as minor characters, with little narrative interaction with main characters. In the 2000s, with changing views on depicting race, Latino/a characters are both typecast into stock characters and the writers play with viewer expectations by making a seemingly stock Latino/a character act or behave "against type". Southern sheriff stock characters are depicted with a negative stereotype of being obese, poorly trained, uneducated, and racist, as was done with Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane from "The Dukes of Hazzard". In the United States, courts have determined that copyright protection cannot be extended to the characteristics of stock characters in a story, whether it be a book, play, or film.