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 fifth 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 6, Episode 23 “Love, Boat” (B)

Context is obviously necessary for this show, and I’m not sure that, even with the (approximately) twenty-two episodes of this show that I’ve seen, I know too much about the relationship between Dre’s parents. It was clear here that Dre had negative associations with it from the past, and that he doubted that his father was going to treat his mother well this time. The way that they renewed their romance was rather excessive, describing how they had secretly had sex in every part of the house and replacing a photo of them that Bow had taken down from their mantle just hours earlier with an even larger print. Whether it works or not is a question that may be answered in season seven given that this was the season six finale, but I’ll only know if it comes up in an episode that’s nominated next year. This episode is the submission for Anthony Anderson, who has actually been nominated for every season of this show, an impressive feat given that the series as a whole has only contended for the top category in half of those years. While his episodes in previous years were more dramatic in nature, last year’s was all about his startled reaction to his kids not knowing Prince. This installment is like that, seeing him freeze and shriek in horror when he walked in on his parents and then try to police their relationship despite his lack of any real power. It was fun to see Bow tell him that she was going to pretend to be supportive since she knew he wasn’t listening anyway, and she even muttered to herself that she paid for most of the down payment on the home, but he could have that one. It’s far from Anderson’s strongest submission and I don’t think there’s much buzz for him or his show this year, but it’s an entertaining choice.