Dimension

topic. They drop names and statistics. They get Ta-Nehisi
Coates. They explore all the sides. They write explicit lines
like, “Kids are dying in the street” and “The system is
rigged against us.” They make Dre and Bow’s polarizing
viewpoints — a staple in the show, which often results in
When do you have “the
talk” with your children?
When do you tell them
about the harm they face
because their skin is darker?
multiple scenes of watching a couple squabble — seem
necessary and 100 percent compelling here.
And then they bring up President Obama’s inauguration.
One of the reasons I fell so hard for Black-ish was
because it was depicting elements of black culture that I
hadn’t really seen on television, because it was inserting
music cues that you wouldn’t get anywhere else, because it
was name-dropping the black cultural leaders that other
shows weren’t (tonight: Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and
Ta-Nehisi Coates). Of course, you pick any current television
series out of a hat and they’ve probably mentioned
Obama at some point, but this was entirely different. This
was so hyper-specific and so achingly real, perfectly capturing
the up and down emotions we — black people — had.
“Remember when he got elected and we felt like maybe,
just maybe, we got out of that bad place and maybe to a
good place? That the whole country was really ready to
turn the corner?” Dre asks, referencing the elation and
optimism of seeing our brown skin — the skin that we’ve
been punished, beaten, enslaved, and murdered because
of — seeing that same skin on the goddamn President of
the United States. But then he references the downside,
the way in which our joy can so quickly turn to fear or
(rightful) paranoia because that’s what history has taught
us. “We saw him get out of that limo and walk alongside
of it and wave to the crowd. Tell me that you weren’t terrified
when you saw that. Tell me that you weren’t worried
that someone was gonna snatch that hope away from us
like they always do.” In that scene, Black-ish articulated
something that I felt during the inauguration — this
overwhelming fear that something would happen to
Obama because that horror and fear is ingrained in my
DNA — that I had never said out loud, let alone seen
reflected on a Wednesday night ABC sitcom.
In “Hope,” there is no explicit conclusion because there
is no conclusion to this ongoing problem in real life. It
ends with them going to join the protest together, in solidarity
with each other and in solidarity with their black
brothers and sisters. It ends with the only thing this black
family — this black community — knows what to do: stay
together and love each other fiercely.
So, yes, I am entirely biased when it comes to this
episode. There is no way I would grade it anything but
an A. There was no expectation that I would watch it
without crying, and that I wouldn’t immediately restart it
the second it was over. Television is personal, sometimes,
and that’s a good thing. We need it.
REVIEWS 43