Via Madamenoire:
“I don’t what to piss anyone off. I don’t want to politicize the show. I don’t want people to feel like it’s not funny enough. I don’t want people to feel like it’s too heavy to be a comedy. That’s encapsulated in some of my fears. But it’s done now. I’m proud of it. But I’m schizophrenic in terms of how I view it, because I do see that it’s heavy. As a writer, you never want to have the Special Episode of television, but there’s no way that it doesn’t fit under that category. (Laughs.) So I’m there with it. I just hope that it’s received well and I hope that it actually starts a conversation, because I think that it’s a conversation we need to have.”
That’s what Black-ish creator Kenya Barris told The Hollywood Reporter about Wednesday night’s episode of the ABC comedy on police brutality, appropriately titled “Hope.” This morning, those fears prove more than irrational as the episode has gotten the digital equivalent of a standing ovation for the way in which it perfectly captured the sentiments many African Americans feel in these tiresome days of trying to convince society our lives matter when we thought we’d finally gotten through eight years ago when President Barack Obama was elected.
The most emotional scene of the episode, which opens with a discussion on how to talk to children about the injustices of the world, set against a backdrop of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” and a montage of protests throughout the decades,happens when the family is gathered around the TV, watching the news to see if a police officer will be indicted for the killing of an unarmed Black man. It’s a scene that has played out in many of our homes several times during the past few years with the cases of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and touches on the dilemma many parents face every time one of these incidents occurs: what do I say to my kids about this?
Keep reading on this post – [HERE].
Did you watch the episode? What did you think?
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