Appraising Black-Ish and Its Satisfying, Imperfect First Half
LatestOn Wednesday night, Black-ish aired its requisite Christmas episode, the fall finale, which featured Andre (Anthony Anderson) campaigning to be the first Black Santa for his annual office party. One of the show’s simple, burdensome tasks as a Black family sitcom that also directly tackles race is to merely succeed. In its first-half run, it’s found creative ways to make good, interesting (albeit flawed) TV out of typical storylines.
For all its intended boundary-breaking, Black-ish still has to play by the family rules, which means lots of sitcom tropes. Of the initial 10 episodes, there’s been a Punishment Episode, The Talk, a Crazy Mom Episode, Babysitting Episode and a Halloween Special (doubling as the Prank Episode), all of which did well at flipping cliché scenarios into funny commentaries from a modern Black family’s perspective. Because so many family sitcom tropes in recent years have only tailored to the white American experience, seeing some version of a Black story—in a way that highlights both the normalcy and the differences in Black family units—has been satisfying.
It reminds me of the viewing pleasure I got out of Everybody Hates Chris. Other Black family shows like Chris and My Wife and Kids have touched on race, but not the way Black-ish has approached it so far. Initially, this was unclear—just how much the show (created by Kenya Barris, with Larry Wilmore as showrunner) would incorporate race. So far, every episode sees color. Ratings prove viewers are into it. In a piece about the series getting a full-season order, Deadline reported:
For Black-ish, the pickup comes after an encouraging Week 3 rating uptick last night as the family comedy also logged the best-ever viewer retention out of Modern Family for any comedy debut.
Last night’s Christmas episode, “Black Santa/White Christmas,” opened with a montage of the family celebrating past Christmases—in one flashback, Dre’s mom (played by Jenifer Lewis) tells a young Dre, “You think some fat white man showed up on Jesus’ birthday and gave you those full-priced socks? Ha! I don’t think so.”