Dre Johnson is a loud man with a big personality, so it’s no surprise when Black-ish tries to inject him into smaller, insignificant stories, the balance of the show feels off. “Chop Shop” is definitively one of those episodes, centered around the conflicts arising from Dre’s barber and Bow’s Christmas card, relying exclusively on one-liners and visual gags to drive an entirely inconsequential episode of the series – and oddly, one that exists without resolution in either of its leading stories, which makes the whole affair feel like an unfinished thought.
The weirdest part about Dre’s story is not how it turns his son into a complete douche (which it does; Junior finds new ways to be annoying throughout the episode); it’s how “Chop Shop” never tries to answer why Dre is the only one getting a terrible haircut. With such attention paid to how awful his barber’s work has gotten, this story just kind of drifts around in the familiar, shallow waters of Dre complaining at a high pitch: at the barber, his wife, his son… and none of it really lands anywhere, unless you count using the social construct of the barbershop to teach his son how to treat women like crap.
But why is Dre getting such a bad haircut? Jack’s hair isn’t screwed up – and not once does this episode offer us anyone else who even suggests he might be screwing someone else’s hair up. Junior’s haircut gets messed up, but only because his barber was in a fistfight while he was cutting (“he even changed guards!”). Dre just gets a bad haircut because… the episode wants him to have a bad haircut, because it’s the most important thing to him next to God and shrimp (his wife is somewhere below that on the list, right around “clean sneakers,” reinforcing just how wonderful these people are). Is his barber going senile – or is there a deep-seeded beef? Outside of painting Dre’s “community” – since we’ve seen him in a barbershop all of once through the series, so this application of the idea is flawed from the word go – the only thing the barbershop offers the Johnson family is some well-written jokes about NBA players.
That’s it, and Bow’s story offers even less, designed around another “Bow and Ruby don’t like each other” plot. We know how these go: Ruby insults Bow left and right while she tries to appease to her, and in the end, Bow looks like a fool while Ruby crosses herself and says “Black Jesus” (which she definitely does again in this episode). This story’s become extremely tired already. It’s just needless Empire references and insults at Bow’s ability to be a parent (as well as questioning her ‘blackness’ on a constant basis, reinforcing even more uncomfortable racial stereotypes), an entire story built around the image of Bow crying in every single family picture, because getting people into a costume in the living room once a year is just so damn hard. Seriously?
There isn’t a moment of “Chop Shop” that doesn’t feel wasted. Opening with such a poignant observation of the first black millionaire, this week’s Black-ish follows in suit with many other Season 2 episodes, offering a sociologically-rich introduction, than undercutting those ideas with superficial family comedy. In a vacuum, the various jokes and gags of “Chop Shop” are definitely amusing; but put them together, and the picture it forms is a lot uglier, and unfunny, than probably intended.
[Photo credit: Kelsey McNeal/ABC]
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