#BlackAF: A Bit Of 'The Office' With A Bit Of 'Black-ish'

Rating: 3.5 Stars

The eight-episode meta-sitcom is remarkably self-aware and self-deprecating about cultural codes, the restraints of mobility and its creator.

This show draws directly on Barris’s experience as an African-American producer.

The girl, 17-year-old Drea (Iman Benson), whose description says, “Not an a*shole” narrates the story from her point of view. Her dad is Kenya Barris (played by himself), whom Drea thinks “hates his money and wants to spend as much of it as possible before he dies.”

Barris is pretty wealthy, having produced shows like black-ish, grown-ish and mixed-ish for ABC and now starting a very lucrative deal with Netflix (all based on reality) who he also fights hard to make sure everyone around him, including his family, knows he’s “black as fu*k.” 

The intentionally awkward mock-documentary that shows Black-ish's producer Barris as an excessive and emotionally cripple on-camera version of himself may not be the most original idea in the world, but it definitely worked out great in the series. Barris has basically remade a show he already did at ABC. 

With part Modern Family, part The Office, part Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, part Larry Sanders and a whole lot of the Black-ish, #blackAF’s structure provides the grounds to go and do whatever it wants.

What makes the series strange is that #blackAF basically is mostly black-ish, with a different cast. 

The idea behind #blackAF is that Barris already presented a version of him and his family in black-ish, where Anthony Anderson’s Dre Johnson, the stand-in for Barris, struggles to have his family hold on to their Black identity. The difference between the two is that in this show, Barris actually plays himself but also focuses the story on his and his family's identity.

Although, Kenya’s constant battles about his blackness are played up for laughs here even more than they are on black-ish. To conclude, #blackAF is a funny but messy show because Barris wasn't afraid of doing improvement of the code that brought him this success six years ago.

By centring the mockumentary around Drea’s perspective, it helps put Barris and his family into perspective better. She says, for instance, that her house “is a really nice house for Black people, which somehow kinda makes it less nice.” It’s an honest sentiment that Barris uses to skewer his own persona, which he takes every chance he can get to do.

While Barris playing his own self might not be the best idea as pretty much every person he shares a scene with is a more polished performer, the kids included. His presence and his acting somehow still puts the show into place.

Most story points are specifically rooted in the African-American experience. The third episode features both a Juneteenth celebration and an extended debate about adultification, an aspect by which (as Drea explained) people believe that “little black girls look and act older than their age to justify the horrible shit done to them.” Adding the discussion of whether black audiences should feel obligated to support black art even if they don’t like it in the fifth episode, the show takes advantage of the relaxed running time and lack of network notes to go deep on their subjects which might possibly be very effective in terms of educating people about the struggles of being black.

Mostly, though, #blackAF will leave you curious to see the other shows that Barris makes with his $100 million Netflix deal and has already made before (if you haven't watched them already).

“#blackAF” is a show that will leave you educated about money, what it means to black people collectively and what it does to and for people individually. The show, although, can be harsh on the subject. 

In an episode, describing the joys of flying first class, Kenya says, “I kind of feel like the people in the back of the plane is animals now.” 

But there are also an awful lot of echoes and repetitions: themes, storylines and character dynamics that already were explored on “blackish.”

At a low point, he finds himself sitting in front of a TV, watching a “black-ish” rerun. “Such a good show,” he murmurs. It’s funny, but it’s true. 

To conclude, the show will definitely leave you educated and in laughs even though it has it's cons.