Emmy Episodes: Black-ish

It’s always my policy to watch every Emmy-nominated episode each year, which leads me to sample a handful of shows that I don’t tune in to on a regular basis. For the second year in a row, I’m making a special effort to spotlight each of those installments to offer my perspective on shows that I don’t review each week.

Black-ish: Season 3, Episode 8 “Being Bow-racial” (B)

This show is back with its second nomination for Best Comedy Series. I’ll be looking at the two episodes that serve as individual acting submissions separately, and then the remaining four that make up the six-episode selection in one shot. This installment, which deals with Rainbow’s complicated relationship with her biracial heritage, serves as Tracee Ellis Ross’ sampling for voters. Ross was nominated last year for an Emmy, and then managed to win the Golden Globe on her first shot earlier this year, beating out two immediate past winners, two previous winners, and one hot new nominee. That bodes well for her going into a crowded race, but let’s look at the quality of the episode itself. Everything started in this one because Junior came home with a white girlfriend, and Rainbow had much more of a problem with it than Dre did, who was busy being scared of the white woman Microsoft sent. Much of this episode was devoted to pointless discussion of how to talk to people (women) of different cultures, and the absurdity of Charlie having two John Mayer tickets in his back pocket for every single day, which came in very handy when he needed to salvage a sticky situation. Rainbow was able to achieve a sentimental moment with her dad, played by Beau Bridges, that helped her to come to a solid realization. And Zoe took on the project of remodeling the twins’ room. This wasn’t the most poignant or the funniest of the episodes, but it’s a decent half-hour with a fairly good message.