This year’s election cycle has been seemingly a source of major new drama every day. It’s not surprising that shows returning in the fall have been eager to get their word in before November Eighth. Black-ish is no exception. I would have been disappointed if they hadn’t done an episode before the election and was happy about the thoughtful, funny content they produced.
The main story is about Dre losing the love of his life – Obama. He’s still hoping for that third term and will skip work to make mediocre montages until it comes to pass. While we got a strawman hipster last week, we get a strawman Republican this week in Dre’s coworker “The New Haven Ripper”. The whole “Dre’s coworkers are obnoxious idiots” joke has already been done to death and there’s nothing new here. Dre and Charlie commiserate about something, the coworkers say idiotic things. Rinse and repeat. The writers took it a step farther this time with a new coworker who may be a serial killer, mentions Reaganomics in his introduction, and claims Obama let Bin Laden sleep in the Lincoln bedroom.
After that uninspiring conversation, Dre is even more eager to jump into his next obsession – making Junior class president. Junior could be the first black president of his class, and Dre already has the montage cued up.
As one can expect, Junior’s campaign does not go well. First, he has an awkward speech while wearing a weird pantsuit, which leads to Bow exclaiming that he’s getting “Hillaried”. Then, he tries to be the “black” candidate, but fails epically with an assist from Owl City. Finally, he focuses on going after white guilt (it got Charlie a week off from work) and faces a major backlash. Dre accepts that Junior isn’t going to be president, just as Junior announces that by some unknown miracle he actually got elected.
This plot somewhat bothered me because it’s a rehash of last week’s episode. Dre wants one of his kids to do something (Zoey to pray, Junior to win), they have a major fight about doing it, Bow makes Dre realize he can’t force his kids to do something, then they do what he wants them to do anyway. Dre tends to always win in these episodes, even when his behavior is over the line. It may be the traditional-sitcom way for Zoey to pray and for Junior to win the big election, but Black-ish has been striving for something more than being just a traditional sitcom.
A more successful storyline was Johan’s and Pops’s lesson to Jack about voting. Johan pushes the hipsterness even further this week by telling Jack that he is a Bernie Bro who wants America to model its government on Europe. Jack’s outrage about a rigged class pet election and Michelle Obama’s speech from the DNC inspire both Johan and Pops to do something about their jaded view of the world and actually exercise their right to vote.
Meanwhile, Ruby is picking out the perfect outfit to take to the polling place (as someone who lives in a state with mail-in ballots, all this polling place stuff has been completely foreign to me. In Oregon, you can vote and be lazy, like the Founding Fathers intended.) When Diane gives her an online quiz about her values, the quiz concludes that not only does she think like a Trump supporter, she may actually BE Trump. Whatever it takes to make America great again.
The slightest plot of the night is Bow’s attempt to get Zoey to care about her college admissions essay. At this point, she has “Army grades”, according to Junior. Zoey finally decides to use white guilt as the tone of her work. It’s not a great story and I feel like Zoey’s intelligence wildly varies depending on the episode.
I think that even more so than the humor or the silly situations the family gets in (was very upset we don’t get an update on the class pet situation), this episode was important. What other show on television has time to give a mini "I'm Just a Bill"-esque lesson on black voter laws, or bring up and actually define terms like felony disenfranchisement and poll tax? They even got a joke about Junior getting O.J.-ed in there. It was an episode that hopefully encourages readers to think. No matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, this is no time to be sitting on the sidelines.
Best Line of the Night: "’10 Million Fireflies” is hard to recover from". That’s some good Charlie wisdom right there. I have fun imagining the writers trying to come up with the lamest song that could possibly be playing.
What did you guys think? Let me know in the comments!
