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 3 “Age Against the Machine” (B+)

Like the first episode of the season that accounted for another one of the six episodes submitted for this show’s Best Comedy Series sampler, this one deals extensively with current events, or at least things that were very much in the news around a year ago. As usual, Dre is a step behind in understanding his role in everything and how it’s not all that different from how he remembers it, but rather that he’s in a new role now. I enjoyed how both Bow and his father corrected his memory about going to the Million Man March, which was just an extension of how Pops also claimed to have participated in something that he admittedly planned to but hadn’t actually gotten around to going to. In typical fashion, Dre went overboard after accusing Junior of phoning it in and then promptly left him in the middle of a riot, which of course he ended up finding very powerful. The barbs they traded weren’t terribly sophisticated, but Dre was quite proud of himself for calling Junior a black square. I’ve always found Diane to be an entertaining character, and now that she’s a real person, she’s still funny, exhibiting so much control over her brother who idolizes her, is scared of her, and generally just wants to hang out with her. Ending this episode on a serious note with a montage of Black Lives Matter protests was very effective, reminding that comedy isn’t always everything and that some messages are more important.