Tag: tv shows

Blackish, Season 8, episode 2: “The Natural” and Season 1, episode 3: “The Nod”

I love the show black-ish, and I’m sad that it’s wrapping up its eighth and final season, but it was amazing and will always be amazing even during the re-runs. I watched two episodes today, “The Natural” and “The Nod”:

Season 8, Episode 2: “The Natural”

At the beginning, Andre “Dre” Johnson imagines himself playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and striking hits, and then we see him at his new position at work at an advertising agency, where he got bumped up from the urban marketing department to the general marketing department. At first, Dre is excited by his new promotion, but when he gets there his new colleague tells him that there is reserved seating in the conference room and that he can’t just sit anywhere. Then, when he is actually pitching ideas to the team, they just smile and nod but don’t take any of his ideas, and instead talk amongst themselves. There is one guy who sits barefoot and reads Herman Hesse and just blurts out ideas out of thin air without making any effort on his part, and yet his colleagues (everyone except Dre) thinks his pitch ideas are genius. Dre feels like he’s being excluded from the conversation and that his ideas don’t matter, and imagines that he keeps striking out at the plate when the pitcher throws the ball to him.

Meanwhile, Diane tells her family she is going out on a date with a boy from school. While Rainbow is ecstatic, Ruby, their grandmother, doesn’t trust this boy that Diane is dating and tells her to take precaution. Diane thinks she isn’t attached to the boy and throws away the cheap necklace he gave her. Rainbow tells Ruby she’s being ridiculous and that Diane should go ahead with her date. When she comes back from her first date and Rainbow asks how it went, Diane replies with a fake smile that it went ok, but deep down Ruby knows she wasn’t happy on the date and tells Diane to break off the date if something doesn’t go well. Rainbow again thinks Ruby is being ridiculous. Then Diane comes back with a knockoff purse that her date bought her, and Rainbow is angry that he bought her a fake bag and tells her to call off the date. Later on, when they ask her how it went with breaking up with the guy, Diane said she ended up having a good conversation with him and they made up and are still dating.

Meanwhile, Dre is still unsure about his new promotion, especially because of their ignoring his ideas. Dre puts together an entire binder of ideas for pitching the car commercial they’re working on and brings them to work the next day, but then his boss Stevens tells him that they are putting off the car commercial and moving on instead to a promotion for butter. Dre tells them they are ridiculous and calls out Griffin, the coworker who sits and reads all day barefoot during the meeting. Upset, Dre consults his old coworkers from the Urban department, Charlie and Josh. He tells them he feels that he is out of his league in the job and Charlie and Josh take him to play some baseball. They give him some good advice and tell him to not give up in his new position. He also consults Rainbow and she tells him that things aren’t going to be easy in his new role but that he can do it. He then reflects on the advice and meets with Griffin to apologize, but then Griffin tells him that he himself could learn a lot from Dre and the Urban department since they work really hard behind the scenes. Dre’s new coworkers end up appreciating Dre’s work and listening to his ideas, and Dre envisions himself finally winning at the baseball game.

This episode really encouraged me because it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you’re in a new environment and it seems like everyone else’s ideas are better than yours. Dre constantly gets his ideas shut down in his new department and it seems like he does all the work and everyone else just magically has talent to think of new genius ideas off the top of their head. But deep down, they respected what Dre did but since he was new they weren’t sure whether he knew what he was talking about when he pitched different ideas. The fact that Dre made those efforts in his new department behind the scenes, though, showed me that even if people seem like they’re not watching my efforts they are, and that I may just not need constant approval to know that I’m doing a good job. When I got a new job in 2018 I felt I had to know everything from the get-go, to be super eager to start and get my ideas going, but like anything in life, learning something new or getting a job in a completely different field than you’ve done before is going to be challenging to get used to at first and there is always going to be a learning curve. And because I felt I had to know everything right away and prove myself to my coworkers, I would get easily frustrated when I made mistakes or didn’t learn things as quickly as I wanted. After more than three years working at the company I came to realize that I didn’t have to prove my worth to anybody because what I was doing was valuable to the company in its own way, and that each role at the company has its own unique purpose, but that the ultimate role is to work together as a team in our different capacities to deliver excellent customer service to clients. I also realized that I am always going to be learning something new at my job, whether that comes in the form of soft skills like teamwork or patience or hard skills like Microsoft Office or databases, and that I am responsible for my own growth at the company. When I get my efforts recognized at work, like Dre, I felt like the work I was doing mattered, and it taught me to keep doing me and keep growing in my own unique way at the company.

Episode 3: The Nod

The episode opens up with Dre helping Junior carry his Hobbit Shire project to class, and they pass by another Black dad and his son. Dre and the dad exchange what’s called “the nod,” which is a greeting that Black people give each other out of acknowledgement and respect. While Dre nodded, Junior didn’t nod to the boy, and Dre asks him why he didn’t do it, dropping and damaging Junior’s project in the process. Later on at dinner, Dre complains to Rainbow and Pops that Junior didn’t nod to his Black classmate like he was supposed to, and Rainbow tells him to let it go because Junior’s generation has a different view about the struggle and race than Dre’s generation. Dre explains that the nod is basic etiquette in Black culture, and that it’s the equivalent of a baby waving hi or a man scrunching up his face when a woman with a big butt walks by. When Junior still doesn’t get it, Dre feels like he failed and Pops defends Dre and tells Junior that the nod, and the “butt thing” are basic etiquette for Black men.

This is the clip explaining the nod for more context:

Meanwhile, Diane and Jack are drawing pictures at the kitchen table and Rainbow looks at Diane’s drawing and thinks they are test tubes because Diane wants to be a doctor like Rainbow, but Diane tells her they are something else and refuses to be a doctor because she thinks it’s boring. No matter how much Rainbow tries to convince Diane of the benefits of being a doctor, the main one being that she gets to save lives, Diane isn’t buying it.

Dre then gives the nod to another Black coworker named Charlie, one of the few other Black people at Stevens and Lido, the ad agency he works at. He moved recently from the Starbucks corporation in Seattle, and is trying to make new friends. He latches on immediately to Dre because he’s the only other Black person at the firm, and Dre promises to make Charlie feel welcome at the firm, even though he feels Charlie seems a little too eager to make friends with Dre. Later Charlie meets Dre in the urinal and breaks the etiquette of standing two urinals away from Dre, instead taking the one right next to him. Dre confesses that he’s stressed out that Junior doesn’t have any Black friends at school (earlier he and Pops met with a Black socialite club that Rainbow told Dre about in the hopes that Junior would make Black friends there, but the couple who runs the club tells them they need a deeper purpose for sending Junior to the club since they are about community service and respectability and not so much about simply making Black friends.) and Charlie tells Dre to take Junior to Compton so he can make Black friends. Dre then takes Junior to a basketball court in Compton so Junior can play with the guys, but all Junior ends up doing is failing to make any of the shots and being beasted by the other players during the game. Meanwhile, Diane at first is bored to be at the hospital Rainbow works at, but then she sees several injured patients rolling by in gurneys down the hall and because Diane is into blood and violence she changes her mind and later tells Rainbow, who apologizes to Diane that she saw that stuff, that is was the best experience ever and that she wants to be a doctor after seeing all the blood.

Dre and Charlie run into each other in the break room and Charlie urges Dre to try some of his soup, not respecting Dre’s boundaries. Dre tells him to cool his jets and Charlie apologizes for being so insistent because he and his son just moved and they haven’t made a lot of Black friends. Dre invites Charlie and his son, Eustace, over for dinner. He introduces Junior to Eustace and tells him to go and play with his new Black friend. While Junior and Eustace are playing, Charlie is telling inappropriate jokes at dinner and comes down from the stairs wearing Dre’s new OG Air One shoes from Dre’s shoe collection. Rainbow warned him that Charlie had no boundaries, but Dre didn’t listen at first and gave Charlie the benefit of the doubt, but now that Charlie has stolen his shoes, Dre is more comfortable expressing his boundaries. Dre tells Junior to say goodbye to Eustace, but then finds that Eustace and Junior bonded over Junior’s Hobbit Shire project and both love Lord of the Rings. Dre realizes that Junior did develop friendships with other Black kids in his own way, and Junior ends up exchanging the nod with an Asian classmate, who gives the nod in return. At the end we see Pops, Dre and Junior sitting on a park bench, and Dre and Pops are teaching Junior how to scrunch up his face when a woman with a big butt walks by. He soon becomes a natural at it, and then says “damn” and scrunches his face up when he sees an attractive woman walk by.

I really loved this episode because it reminded me that there’s no monolithic way to be Black. There were times when I didn’t feel I was “black enough” but then in sophomore year I took a class in the Afro-American Studies department called introduction to Black culture, and towards the end of the course we talked about the different expressions of identity within Black communities, and how there’s no single narrative of Blackness but rather diverse narratives. When I was lonely in college and depressed, I googled the term “black nerds” and I came across a wealth of search results, one of them being an article about a web series called The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. After watching episode 9 of season 2, “The Check”, I was hooked on the series and couldn’t get enough of it. I saw myself in the protagonist of the series, J (played by Issa Rae), because I was struggling a lot with awkwardness and wanted someone I could relate to and looked like me. Watching J struggle through life as an awkward Black person made me feel less alone.

And in blackish, I found that same solace in Junior. He doesn’t know many other Black kids at his school he can hang out with, and unlike his dad, he grew up in the suburbs around very few other Black kids at his school so he didn’t really have the same upbringing and etiquette that Dre had of acknowledging another Black person’s existence when you’re walking down the street or anywhere where you don’t see too many Black people. Junior and Bow don’t think it’s a big deal but Dre and Pops do because Pops raised Dre to give the nod to other Black people when he encountered them. But when Dre finds that Junior and Eustace bond together over their shared love of The Lord of the Rings, he realizes that Junior was going to find other Black people to hang out with, just in his own unique way and just as he was. This gave Junior the confidence to extend the nod to other young men at his school to show he’s seen them and recognizes their shared humanity, whether or not they are Black like him. I remember in college struggling to acknowledge other Black people; except for my Africana Studies courses, most of the spaces I frequented in college were white: the asexual community, the orchestra I was in, the town. Before college it didn’t matter to me whether or not I acknowledged other Black people around me; I thought, “yes, I’m Black, but I’m human, so who cares?” But then in college, after learning about the experiences of other students of color who felt isolated in these predominantly white spaces, I realized that it is in fact a big deal when you see another Black person and recognize their presence, especially when there aren’t many Black people in the spaces you’re in. I went to a conference my junior year for Black undergraduates, and seeing so many other Black people made me feel less alone, especially because the dorm I lived in there weren’t many other Black people. I also learned I could just be myself; I usually get nervous before conferences or at networking events because I tend to be introverted, but I realized I could just be myself, and I was able to network in my own unique way. I also found other Black friends in college to hang out with. I think that’s why I click with Junior in black-ish so much because he’s nerdy and a lot of times doesn’t feel like he fits in with everyone else, but he remains true to himself and ends up finding people who respect him for who he is.

TV episode summary: Broad City Season 3, Episode 3

In Season 3 of the show Broad City there is an episode called “Game Over,” and honestly it is one of the funniest episodes I have seen. At the beginning Abbi Abrams (played by Abbi Jacobson) is teaching a swim class for seniors. They are having fun taking the class, but then one of the participants drowns and Abbi has to retrieve him and revive him. When Abbi does CPR, the old guy, Squibs, opens his eyes and winks at the other ladies and grins, showing that he was just faking it and just wanted Abbi to kiss him. Abbi finds out he was faking it and afterwards when she is getting ready to leave and is finishing up the swim class, Squibs says he could “pop her cherry”, and Abbi tells him he knows her daughter is calling her to report that he hit on her. After Abbi leaves, Squibs complains that what Abbi is doing is called elder abuse.

After the super catchy theme song (and awesome art that goes with it), we see Abbi’s friend Ilana Wexler (played by Ilana Glazer) working at a marketing company called Deals Deals Deals. She is wearing a dog hoodie (which I thought was just a super small hoodie for adults) and her boss, Todd, comes to her desk and reminds her that he emailed her telling her not to come into work today because she has consistently goofed off and acted silly during work and doesn’t take it seriously. Ilana asks him if he emailed her at her address ilanawexler@mindmyvagina.com, and he says he refuses to use that email. Ilana keeps convincing him to let her keep staying at work, and he tells her to go home because she is wearing a dog hoodie. She denies this but he tells her that it is because the hoodie has holes for dog ears. In a moment I thought utterly hilarious, Ilana turns around and asks if there is a pocket on the back to confirm that it is, in fact, a dog hoodie. Ilana jokes that this is the second time this has happened to her, and then on her way to go to the bathroom or in the hall for some other shenanigans, she tells Todd and her coworker Nicole, who absolutely loathes Ilana because she isn’t serious about her work and consistently harasses Nicole, that they are going to make millions at the company (“we’re going to be billionaires, no–kajillionaires.”)

The scene cuts to Abbi at Soulstice, where she also works as a cleaner, and they are getting ready for the big competitive games. Abbi, who is extremely competitive, wants to join in. The trainer who has a crush on her, Trey, encourages her to compete, and Abbi gets ready for the games. Before that, she finds herself in a room full of other naked Soulstice folks and Trey tells her there is a changing room if she needs it. At first she says it’s fine, but then everyone around her starts to undress in the locker room and someone drops their pills and everyone gathers where Abbi is standing to retrieve them, and Abbi finally gives in and asks Trey where the changing room is so she can change her clothes in private.

The scene cuts then to Ilana back at Deals Deals Deals, and Ilana misses the memo and asks why everyone seems in such a hurried mood. Nicole begrudgingly reminds her that Todd just told her that the investor is coming. Ilana jokes that she has “baby brain” and Nicole asks her suspiciously if Ilana is pregnant because she said she has “baby brain”, and Ilana laughs and says no and asks Nicole is she is pregnant. Nicole coldly responds, “No.” The investor, played hilariously by Vanessa Williams, comes in and this super funky electronic music plays when Vanessa tosses her expensive beautiful scarf in slow motion across the room to make her entrance. Ilana is seen wowing this woman and scrunching her face to show she is sexually attracted to the investor, whose name is Elizabeth. Ilana introduces herself and says how fascinated she is by Elizabeth’s clothes. Elizabeth tells her it is from TJ Maxx, 30 percent off. Ilana playfully punches Nicole’s shoulder, which is bad because Nicole’s arm is in a brace, and Ilana muses whether she wants to be Elizabeth or be “in” Elizabeth.

Meanwhile, Abbi decides to go through with competing in the Soulstice games, and her competitive spirit comes out in the craziest ways. Ilana warns her about her competitive nature during this kind of event, but Abbi goes through with it anyway because she wants to win. She ends up getting back at Gemma (played by D’arcy Carden) for calling her “cleaner” during a game where they are fighting with these paddle-things. Gemma is impressed with Abbi and tells her she’s stronger than she looks. While Abbi is competing in the games, Ilana is at a company meeting with the investor and the investor tells everyone she is disappointed in how the company is doing with its sales. When she asks anyone if they have any input, she calls on Ilana (she calls her, in all seriousness, “Maxinista”) if she has ideas for improving the company, and Ilana starts telling her and everyone about Salad Fingers and all these videos from ebaum’s world (a website that was super popular when I was in middle school). While her other colleagues look at her with confusion and bewilderment, Elizabeth tells her she has no idea what Ilana is saying and she loves it. She then tells Todd that he is underutilizing Ilana and has Ilana head the company’s Twitter account. In a moment which I thought was absolutely hilarious, Ilana goes “Ms. Hot Lady You Got It!” and Elizabeth looks at her in a determined way. Honestly it made me laugh because I just thought about how many outtakes they had to do of this episode. Like, how can anyone keep a straight face when Ilana says the goofiest things? Also, it must have been a privilege to work with someone like Vanessa Williams.

Unfortunately, things go south and while out celebrating Abbi’s victory in the Soulstice games, Ilana tweets a graphic NSFW video. The next day at work, Ilana comes to work to find everyone grossed out (and one person vomiting in a trash can) after seeing the video on the Twitter account. Ilana wonders what is up, and Todd pulls her into his office. He tells her she is fired for tweeting the video, calling it a “PR nightmare.” Ilana tries to reason with Todd why she was right in tweeting that video, but he tells her that it doesn’t matter, what she did is wrong and he is firing her. She then complains that she is going to talk to “Mom” (aka the investor), but then when she tells Elizabeth about it, Elizabeth tells her she is definitely fired for what she did. Ilana, knowing this is her last interaction with Elizabeth, tells her that she wanted to confess something: that she wants to be “in” her. Elizabeth looks at her blankly, then tells her she needs to leave, implying that Ilana’s comment was absolutely inappropriate and even more reason for her to get fired. Ilana says her goodbyes, calling her coworkers by the nicknames she gave them, such as “White Guy No. 7”, “White Guy No. 3”, and “Adult Braces.” She then precedes to further annoy Nicole and talk her ear off with a sentimental goodbye about how she is the reason Ilana comes to work every other day, and that somehow they will meet again. Before she can stress Nicole out any further, Todd tells her that is enough and to leave immediately. Before she leaves, Ilana puts up an air dancer because she believes in “corporate morale.” When she finally leaves, Nicole and everyone break out into a hilarious lip-sync performance of “Joyful, Joyful” from Sister Act 2 to celebrate Ilana officially being fired from the company. Nicole finally wakes up to the air dancer whacking her in the face, and realizes she was daydreaming of the Sister Act performance. She records in her recording device joyfully that she is free now that Ilana is no longer at the firm.

Honestly, this episode is one of the reasons why I love Broad City. It is hilarious. It’s the episode I’ve re-watched more times than I can recall.

New TV Show!

January 10, 2020

Categories: TV shows

So I was on a flight, and the flight offered access to free TV shows and movies, so I wanted to watch a show that I hadn’t seen before. I wanted a comedy because I saw the film Judy while on my trip and it was really sad and made me cry, so I wanted to watch something that would make me laugh. For the first flight I watched A Black Lady Sketch Show, which, if you haven’t seen it, is so funny I had to literally clamp my hand around my mouth to suppress all the giggles that threatened to rush forth and disturb my fellow passengers on the plane. Then since there were only three free episodes I could watch (although I’m grateful I even got it for free at all) I moved on to another show in the comedy section. Parks and Recreation was an option but it only showed Season 2 and I assumed that I’d get lost if I didn’t watch Season 1. Then I saw Fleabag, and I remembered it won quite a few awards recently, and I checked Rotten Tomatoes and it got 100 percent, so I took a chance. And I’ve never looked back since. Once you go Fleabag, you will never go back.

Why, you ask?

Fleabag is a comedy-drama about a young woman living in England (we don’t know her real name, we just know she is named Fleabag), and she really doesn’t have her life together. She runs a café but is in a lot of debt, and she goes through a series of boyfriends who end up thinking she’s too sarcastic and weird for them. In addition to being dumped by numerous bad boyfriends, her overachieving rich sister, Claire, and her are not on good terms. Things get even weirder when she goes by her dad’s place (her mom died) and meets her godmother, who is dating her dad. When I first saw the show, it reminded me of the film Frances Ha. If you haven’t seen Frances Ha, it stars Greta Gerwig as a young late-20-something-old woman named Frances who, like Fleabag, is trying to figure her life out. Unlike her friend Sophie, Frances cannot afford to move to Tribeca, a more expensive neighborhood of New York, and doesn’t have financial assistance from anyone, so she moves to a less expensive neighborhood with roommates. I thought about this movie because both Frances Ha and Fleabag are so relatable for every woman (or person of any gender really) in their late 20s who sees everyone has their life together and, well, they feel their lives just don’t measure up.

I binge-watched Season 1 (just finished it.) One thing that I find unique about Fleabag is that Fleabag always speaks to the audience, aka breaking the fourth wall. Not since the Disney Channel Original Movie Quints have I seen the protagonist break the fourth wall. It just makes you feel like you’re actually meeting Fleabag in real life. And honestly, I wouldn’t mind meeting Fleabag, because she says what is on her mind and I find her awkwardness totally relatable, even though I can’t relate to her situation totally. She kind of reminds me of a combination of not just Frances Halladay in Frances Ha but also Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm because Larry is always brutally honest with people even when it often gets him in trouble with others. Fleabag also reminds me a lot of the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, which stars Issa Rae as J, who is, as the title says, an awkward Black woman. There is one guy who asks Fleabag out on the subway who is this really annoying character who ends up dumping her, and he reminded me a lot of A, a character who is constantly trying to hook up with J even though she doesn’t like him. J and A hook up after J gets drunk on too much punch at an office holiday party, and after A is constantly assuming that J wants to be his girlfriend because they slept together.

Even though Fleabag is a comedy, it also has its sad moments. Early in the show, Fleabag reveals that her friend, Boo, killed herself after she found out Fleabag slept with her boyfriend. The two of them were the best of friends and they started a gerbil-themed café together. But now that Boo is gone, Fleabag becomes depressed and flashes back frequently to memories of her and Boo when Boo was still living (I got really sad each time she flashed back to Boo when she was happy and then Boo when she was about to commit suicide.) Fleabag’s godmother has the nerve to tell her one time at dinner that she should give up running the café since she has no money left to run it, but then an investor who at first declined Fleabag a loan for the café (after she flashed her bra at him during their meeting), sees her in tears and she tells him about Boo’s suicide and how she feels like she is always ruining things for people. He then has a change of heart and goes over the process of getting her a loan again. This ending gave me hope because I was so stressed out whenever Fleabag and her godmother interacted since the godmother was treating Fleabag like she was a nobody and her father felt embarrassed by Fleabag’s behavior toward her godmother.

I am getting tired now, so unfortunately I cannot write anymore. However, I am pumped to watch Season 2 and tell you more about it!