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 sixth 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 7, Episode 5 “Babes in Boyland” (B)

This is a bit of a head-scratcher. This is the only episode of this show that I’ll be screening this year not submitted as part of the six installments chosen as representation for Best Comedy Series. Instead, it’s Tracee Ellis Ross’ episode, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since she has almost no role in it. If it was Anthony Anderson’s, that might be more logical, but this one barely gives Ross all that much to do and just doesn’t let her shine in the way that she has even in other episodes I’ve watched from this season. The idea that Diane, who has always been clever even from a young age, would be very active on social media in a way that her parents wouldn’t like was a great opportunity for them to realize the double standards they were holding their daughter to when they would let Jack get away with anything. To her credit, Ross did handle the continued realization that she was judging Ashley more harshly than Jack in a funny way, and she and Anderson got to have fun surprising both kids by giving them equal punishments since they had in fact lied to them. Such behavior didn’t work out well for Junior either, even though his grandmother coached him to do it, since Olivia’s world food tour was killing his insides. When Junior came around to being open and direct with her, he even got his grandparents to communicate in a more transparent way than they had in years if not ever before.