I was disappointed, however, that “Hope” only mentioned black men as the social-justice titans for impressionable black youth. Junior is profoundly affected by Ta-Nehisi Coates, just as Dre was changed by Malcolm X, and Pops was changed by James Baldwin. Dre Johnson may have made it out of Compton, but he’s still struggling to do the same for all of his children. In Boyz n the Hood, he was raising a son in South Central Los Angeles while trying to both protect and prepare his child for what the outside world had in store for black men.
It makes sense that we’d see Furious in an episode like this one. Not only do we get to see Dre in his ’90s high-top fade, but we also see Laurence Fishburne revive Furious Styles, his character from Boyz n the Hood. The flashback that followed made me yell with joy. Pops reminds Dre that he acted the same way after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He cautions Junior against putting too much stock into one book. Dre bristles that Junior is paying more attention to Coates than to him. He’s been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, an epistolary memoir written as a letter to Coates’s son, which traces America’s violent relationship with race. Junior knows the history of police brutality is more nuanced than Pops’s declaration that cops are thugs. There’s no escaping the reality of police brutality against black people in America. No matter where anyone goes, they’re still affected. “Hope” is structured as a bottle episode, which mirrors the subject matter in certain ways. The rest of the action is confined to the family room and kitchen. Later, the kids will point out that they can still hear everything being said. Bow sends the twins into the kitchen - ostensibly to choose take-out for the night - but really to remove them from the conversation. She wants to keep them as innocent for as long as she can, but Dre, Pops, and Ruby want the kids to be prepared for the world. The twins don’t fully understand what’s going on, and Bow doesn’t want Dre or his parents to explain it to them.
There have been so many situations like this, it’s hard to keep up. Zoey thinks she remembers seeing reports about the man’s death - but it turns out she heard about a different killing. Clearly, Black-ish won’t pull any punches with this episode.Īfter the montage, we see the family has gathered to watch the news they’re waiting to see if police officers will be indicted for killing an unarmed black man. Just as Gaye sings the line, “trigger-happy policing” the sequence lands on a sign featuring a large illustration of Trayvon Martin. We see a montage of protests throughout history. You have to be prepared to answer questions.
Today, between the internet and 24-hour news coverage, it’s impossible to keep information from children.
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Growing up, when he tried to ask Pops about the 1980 Miami riots, Pops simply told him to turn the TV off and avoid the discussion.
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Marvin Gaye’s “ Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” provides the soundtrack for Dre’s opening remarks about how to talk to your children about the cruelties of the world. There were definitely moments of overly earnest dialogue, but ultimately, the show did what it does best: “Hope” highlights a very real issue in an honest, thought-provoking manner. When I first heard that Black-ish would discuss police brutality, I worried it would step into “Very Special Episode” territory. Laurence Fishburne as Pops, Tracee Ellis Ross as Bow, Marcus Scribner as Junior, Jenifer Lewis as Ruby, Miles Brown as Jack, Marsai Martin as Diane, Anthony Anderson as Dre.
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