When I first heard of the show I DVR’d the next episode. It hapenned to be this one on spanking… actually the first few minutes that I actually watched was more about “whipping” IIRC.
I cringed and turned it off… not because I don’t think parents should be able to discipline their kids. It was just too close to the Adrian Peterson brew-ha-ha and I feared I would be pissed off that blacks and spanking would be ok in one context but not another.
Good thing you turned it off before forming an opinion.
I haven’t seen the pilot (it wasn’t available online), but heard it was pretty bad. I watched the other episodes last night. Decently funny with a couple of LOL moments, but nothing really groundbreaking I think. I thought The Boondocks was a better/funnier show on the theme of black families living in affluent mostly-white 'hoods, at least before Aaron McGruder stopped writing the show. Still, I’ll keep watching for now.
The wife is a Doctor and the Husband is a Partner in a Marketing firm. I wouldn’t call that middle class.
Am I the only one here that thought the pilot was hilarious?
You might be… 
Well I guess I’m in decent company with the majority of TV critics who seemed to enjoy it ;).
The pilot was good, yes.
I realize that this is not at all the point of this thread, and not to be a dick, but are you sure you know what you’re talking about in this regard? My wife and I are both medical professionals and I am a partner in my business and, based on gross income alone, I consider us (possibly) upper-middle class, but at the least definitely solidly middle class.
There have been a number of threads in the past on what constitutes middle class, upper middle class, etc… that we probably should not rehash here, but we can certainly begin a new thread to discuss it further, if you want.
I’d consider them rich, myself.
I like to think I have an open mind so, after reading this thread yesterday, I watched two episodes of Black-ish last night, but this time I roped my wife into it, to gauge her reactions as well, as she had not only not seen the show, but had not heard of it. The two episodes we watched were ‘The Talk’ and ‘The Nod’. I’d previously seen ‘The Talk’.
Verdict? Not for me. I fully admit that I probably took the program too seriously, so seriously in fact that the humor completely escaped me. It isn’t that I didn’t recognize the humor, but I think I became so wrapped up in what the program attempted to portray as what it means to be ‘properly black’ that I could not get into it, at all, and yes, I cringed at certain segments. The over-the-top caricature of the strong black man, with the father character stereotypically going so far as to tell his son that he is a man (as opposed to a potted plant, I guess) was a complete turn-off to me.
Wife’s verdict? Not for her. In her defense, my wife was not born or raised in America so many aspects of the program went over her head as she asked a number of times “why is this funny?”
Because there was some mention of a Halloween episode here yesterday, I asked my wife if she wanted to watch it but, by the end of ‘The Nod’ she was done.
I think the characters on the show consider themselves rich, too.
I wouldn’t, and neither would the characters. They work for their money; their money doesn’t work for them. And in the execreble the Tracee Ellis Ross character – Bo? – worries about the hit to their income and lifestyle if the Anthony Anderson character loses his job.
Have you seen their bedroom? There’s a goddamn hallway in their closet. They’re rich.
Who knows? It is just a TV show, so they may.
In one of the episodes, I believe the wife said to her daughter that she inserts IVs into patients prior to their medical procedures. In a hospital, this is typically the task of a nurse, although I understand the wife is a doctor. What type of doctor is she?
I find the show does a pretty good job of sometimes providing humor that relates to the family being black or mixed, and of sometimes providing humor about family life in general that just happens to involve black characters.
For example, I related a lot to the episode that focused on the oldest son, where he was much more interested in his geeky pursuits than being tied to a particular racial identity. And on the other side, my wife (who is not black) and I laughed and laughed at the husband/wife issues with dishwasher and refrigerator organization because it was completely us.
I have found all of the episodes hilarious, including the pilot. Easily my favorite show of the season.
“Inserting IVs into patients before their medical procedures” could be how an anesthesiologist describes their job to a child.
I initially thought anesthesiologist as well, but didn’t the wife have blood on her hands (surgical gloves) when her daughter walked in during one scene, or am I misremembering?
You aren’t misremembering. She constantly talks about how she saves people’s lives, too. I have been fairly certain that she was a surgeon.
She restarted someone’s heart who’d been at the bottom of a pool for like 20 minutes or something in the halloween episode.