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 9 “First Trap” (B+)

Even if some of the plot developments in this episode were pretty expected, I enjoyed it. This also seems like it could have been a better Emmy submission for Tracee Ellis Ross than the one she picked, since it was fun to see her grapple with the fact that she wasn’t able to be a role model in the way that she wanted, first for Crystal and then for Olivia. I’ve seen Olivia a couple times over the course of this season, and it was great to see her take on a more established role in this episode, first excited at the idea of learning from Bow and then horrified at the negativity that she expressed about everything she had been through to get to where she was. Junior is definitely way too concerned about what his mother thinks about his girlfriend, and he nearly broke up with her because he thought that Bow didn’t like her. As usual, Dre got far too into something when he was finally pointed out to him and got wildly off course, which was the case with his desire to support Black executives. His meeting with Darren went remarkably poorly, and it was good to see that he eventually rectified the situation by trying to befriend him and see eye-to-eye with him rather than turn him into something he’s not. Jack photographing the whole thing helped to capture the awkwardness of Bow and Dre realizing that not everyone saw them in the light that they thought.