Black-ish, despite a few intriguing moments, hasn’t really established itself as a comedy with a distinct voice on racial dynamics, mostly reverting to the simplest jokes possible in those moments, making light of black and white cultural stereotypes in the context of family situations. The most promising aspects – Rainbow’s upbringing, Dre’s position within the company – are mostly only mentioned in passing; so when “Black Santa/White Christmas” comes out with the line “Black people can’t be racist!”, my ears perked up, excited for the show to move beyond its well-executed, but simplistic family comedy values into more daring, culturally reflective territory.
… unfortunately, I’m not sure Black-ish had much to say about the idea except “everybody’s racist… let’s share presents!”. Everybody’s mad at the office party when Black Santa (an over-eager Dre in a costume and fat suit) forgets to bring presents, and both Dre and his mother make some off-color comments about Latinos, only to reveal that in the end, they wouldn’t be able to make Christmas “good” without them (which basically adds up to “give all the kids presents”, hardly the kind of Christmas values I like to see in a family show). That’s really it: the most interesting parts in “Black Santa/White Christmas” are whenever Rainbow and Ruby are fighting to be the Christmas Matriarch, in turn revealing that in Rainbow’s eagerness to be the Yuletide Momma (“Who’s momma?” “ME! I’m Momma!!!”), she turned the family Christmas into Rainbow’s Christmas.
And in the end, Ruby’s famous Christmas dinner was made by “Mexicans”; by then, it feels like “Black Santa/White Christmas” throws up its hands and takes the easy route home, letting Ruby and Rainbow team up to fool everyone into thinking they made the Christmas feast. Everyone’s happy, we have to sit through some more of that horrible Auto-Tune (seriously, I understand its cheesiness was intended – but it’s particularly awful, processed to the point it sounds like digital fingernails on a chalkboard). Dre makes all the kids happy by delivering gifts (thereby completing his journey as Santa, breaking the race barrier he reinforces by not allowing a Mexican woman to be Santa), and the show robs us of hearing Jenifer Lewis’s beautiful singing voice: in the end, the most poignant thing Black-ish had to say about race in this episode was that everyone’s racist in some way, so suck it up and enjoy the holidays.
That’s not to say there aren’t any redeeming traits in the episode: Tracee Ellis Ross is really starting to get a hold of Rainbow’s quirks, which makes her performance a million times more comedic, without every stepping too far into caricature territory. Her character is one who acts out of desperation (she really, really wants her kids to like her and be interested in her), but her actions, no matter how wild and ineffective they are, come out of a place of love (her conversation with Zoey in “The Talk” are the epitome of her attempts to be #1 Mom). Plus, there’s an subplot featuring Charlie and a bag of cocaine, which had me laughing out loud in every office scene (plus this: “My main man, Santa mother-[bleep] Claus!”) – I’m not saying “Black Santa/White Christmas” is terrible, it just doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to say about its title and race-tinged bits of dialogue, which makes the episode’s stunningly sterile conclusion a slight disappointment.
Photo via ABC
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