However, the most compelling sequence of the episode - and one of the best moments on television this year - is when Dre tearfully reminds Rainbow of President Barack Obama's first inauguration, when he and first lady Michelle Obama walked out of their limousine. "If 25% of LAPD shootings are against unarmed suspects, then the remaining 75% must be armed, right? Junior points out that if she lost one 1 of 4 patients, it wouldn't be a good measure of her abilities." Rainbow is "anti-police brutality, but not anti-police," Nichole Perkins wrote for Vulture. At the same time, though, the family concludes that officers must improve as a collective, using real-life statistics as evidence. It's an important moment in the guise of comedy - no, not all police are inherently bad. When Dre is lambasting the police as a group, Rainbow reminds him that in their neighborhood, he knows officers on a first-name basis, which cuts to a flashback of him calling an officer under his covers because he heard a noise and was concerned. "Hope" isn't, however, about labeling police officers exclusively as villains. Meanwhile, the youngest kids - twins Jack and Diane (Miles Brown and Marsai Martin, respectively) - are worried they too could be harmed by any interaction with the police. Eldest son Junior (Marcus Scribner) wants to join the protests happening in the city, but Dre initially refuses to let him. In the episode, the verdict for the fictitious case is, to nobody's surprise but everyone's disappointment, that there will be no indictment. Instead, with new forms of media and the internet, the general public is more aware of systemic violence and oppression than ever. This includes going back to 1963 with the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc - who, in a widely publicized display of protest for the persecution of Buddhist monks, burned himself alive - all the way to signs and illustrations of the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012.īlack-ish uses these images to correspond with the notion Dre and his father (Laurence Fishburne) bring up: These issues aren't new. I think it's an important conversation to have with your kids."īut the episode does use images and clips from important politicized moments from across the world to great effect.
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And the conversations that happen with your kids happen to be around a police brutality case and they decide how to talk about it. "It's about police brutality that's been happening not just now it's actually about a conversation with your kids. "This is not a politicized episode," Barris told Entertainment Weekly.
Thus, the entire episode is isolated to the family room and the kitchen.
"Hope" doesn't focus on the riots or the indictment itself, but the conversations the Johnsons had with their children. Dre (Anthony Anderson) believes his children should know about the harsh realities of the world, while Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross) wants them to have a more hopeful view of society, especially at such a young age.įor Black-ish creator and executive producer Kenya Barris, the idea for the episode came from a conversation he had with his own family - specifically regarding the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. As a result, there are conflicting viewpoints from the parents on how to approach the topic with their kids. "Hope" begins with the family watching the events of a fictitious criminal case on television with a familiar tune - a black teen is the subject of police brutality.
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