Tonight I watched episode 9 of blackish’s farewell season. I’m rather behind in watching blackish so I need to catch up at some point on the episodes I missed this season. In this episode, Dre enters his ad into an advertisement award ceremony and finds out that it got nominated, but his coworkers warn him that another ad has gotten more popularity and thus he doesn’t stand a chance against it. Meanwhile, Dre’s coworker, played by Reid Scott, has already won several ad awards for his past work and makes sure to let Dre know that he won those awards before so it’s nothing worth getting excited about. Dre, however, refuses to give into defeat and tells everyone his ad will win at the award ceremony.
Meanwhile, Olivia, Junior’s girlfriend, is returning from Yale to Los Angeles and Junior plans an entire week packed with fun for her and him. They have been making long-distance love work even though it’s been hard, but Junior imagines that he is going to give Olivia a bouquet of roses and she is going to be in a beautiful dress and they are just going to dance to The Weeknd’s “Earned It” and falling in love with each other. Jack and Diane, his siblings, aren’t convinced that this is how it will turn out but Junior is convinced that it will and hangs onto that idea of him and Olivia continuing their relationship together.
Dre and Bow are at the awards ceremony and so far the popular ad, which was something along the lines of “girl on a horse,” gets all the awards. Dre is discouraged, but then the host announces Dre won an award for his ad. At first, Dre is in disbelief and thinks that he lost, telling Bow he was just happy to be at least nominated for the award, but then Bow snaps him back to reality and tells him that he did in fact win the award. Dre gets up to the stage and thanks his family and the late Nipsey Hussle, but then the orchestra cuts him off and he calls them out on it. Dre’s coworker then approaches him and tells him a story about how Tom Brady won many awards but then getting those awards motivated him to be more competitive, and tells Dre that he is in competition with him for the awards and that Dre should watch out. Dre doesn’t back down and accepts the challenge.
Olivia finally comes home to Junior late at night after a long trip, and he begins to tell her all the fun stuff he has planned for them both, but she dozes off before he can continue because she is exhausted from her trip. Junior feels crushed. While Olivia is sleeping, he plans a food tray with all these fancy food items for her but then Pops asks him more about how things are going with him and Olivia, and Junior says he wants to make the long-distance relationship work between them, but Pops tells him that relationships are challenging, and that him and Ruby’s relationship took work. Later on, Dre and Bow come home from the ceremony to find Pops staying up at the dinner table with Devante playing a song on the keyboard. In that moment Dre realizes that while he was happy to win the award, he missed Devante’s piano recital and actually wants nothing more than to be home with his son hearing him play piano and seeing absolute joy on Devante’s face. Later on, Dre decides to take a day off from work to spend time with Devante and hear him play on the keyboard.
Junior and Olivia meet and Junior is excited to hear about her journey at Yale, but then Olivia says they need to break up because the long-distance relationship just may not be working between them. Junior, absolutely crushed, ends up depressed. At the end of the episode he tells his phone to play “Unbreak My Heart” but it tells him that the person he shared the music account with (aka Olivia) has denied Junior access to it, so he sings aloud to himself the song.
I really loved the part about where Dre realizes that even though he won an award, it doesn’t define the trajectory of his life. Dre spent his entire career dealing with racism and microaggressions at work and people telling him his ideas weren’t good enough, and he had to work twice as hard as his (mostly white) coworkers to get to where he is today and move up the corporate ladder. But after seeing Devante’s joy when he plays music, he realizes that he has been missing out a lot on the little things in life, and realizes that even those seemingly small moments of joy are part of success. It was a lesson for me because there were definitely times where I thought, if I win a Grammy or an Academy my life will be perfect because I have been working so hard towards those dreams. But this episode taught me that at the end of the day, I’m not competing with anyone else for the award. Maybe on the surface, but in reality I can only compete with myself. Dre realized after seeing Devante experience that pure joy that his life was so much more than just a single award. I’m proud Dre won the award and for all the hard work he’s done, but I’m glad he realized that he can be successful while also living as a human being. It reminded me to enjoy life itself, that while I can appreciate success, I have to understand that sometimes living life itself is a success because it has its challenges and I do my best to get through them. Also, I realized that even if I do win a Grammy or an Oscar that’s not the end of my career, and that the award ceremony isn’t going to happen everyday. Every day it will feel like work, but that’s part of the process of growing and maturing is showing up to do the work even if I may not feel like it. Also, Devante is adorable and I loved seeing him joyful when playing piano. I was pretty heartbroken alongside Junior, though. He and Olivia were such a beautiful couple, but definitely I feel that from my own life: long distance, while people make it work, has its challenges. I remember when I had a long-distance relationship with someone from millions of miles in another continent, and we made it work when we were together in India but then as time went on we stayed in touch but then naturally we lost touch and I guess that was our closure. It was a challenge not being there with him, but I guess that’s why I’m glad I had a religion or philosophy to keep me going even when it got tough.
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