Although it’s an endlessly common trait with female characters, there are few entities on television able to make “neurotic” an endearing character trait. Those that can – Annie Edison on Community, Schmidt on New Girl – usually achieve it through informing the audience of that character’s behavior, traumas from their past that accentuate unlikable traits when in stressful situations. At points, Black-ish has painted both Bow and Dre as neurotic people, yet has done a poor job defining where these neuroses stem from – something it does yet again in “The Real World,” treating Bow’s insecurities as a punch line for 20 minutes, then retro-fitting some empathy for her behavior in the final two minutes, creating yet another half-hour of Black-ish where man and wife undermine each other for the sake of selfish, empty pursuits.
Most of “The Real World” – the time spent with the parents, at least – is dominated by Dre’s antics, which begins when he discovers Bow was engaged to a former college friend (who for some reason, has a wife that everyone drools over because she isn’t fat anymore; this is what “The Real World” considers ‘comedy’). As it often does, his issues dominate the episode, reducing Bow’s plight as an insecure, career-first woman who went through multiple heartbreaks in college, losing boyfriend after boyfriend due to her stringent dedication to her education. Black-ish, despite the inherent knowledge of knowing where this is all going to end up, neglects to inform her story with this fact until the final few minutes, after Bow saves Charlie from an allergic reaction to peanuts, thus having something to “shove in the faces” of her former friends and classmates, dredging up some of that trademark bitterness that has plagued the parental units of Black-ish all season (and this episode doesn’t even have Jenifer Lewis and Laurence Fishburne barking at each other through the whole thing!).
Instead, we’re “treated” to Dre bull in a china shop-ing every single scene of the episode, reducing a story about Bow into another whiny half-hour of Dre having a temper tantrum. Some of this is alleviated by a very funny B-story with the kids, who begin filming a reality show pilot of their parents, inspired by The Real World cast member attending Bow’s party (who is less a character than she is a vehicle for David Spade punchlines, which is anything but relevant and/or funny). But the directorial debut of Zoey is overshadowed by another ugly story between her parents, two people who openly bicker in front of company, undermine each other, and outright insult each other for twenty minutes, until it’s time for a half-cooked resolution (which usually involves Dre apologizing, then dismissing Bow’s entire side of the argument) that restores the “order” of the household.
Unfortunately, “The Real World” doesn’t spend enough time unwinding the temporary psychosis of Bow, or Dre’s ridiculous, juvenile behavior until the final minutes of the episode, slapping on an ending where Bow explains that she was too focused on her career to be romantic – which could’ve been an interesting exploration of how Bow figured out how to manage the professional and personal aspects of her life, instead reduced to Dre marginalizing her feelings the entire episode and the show explaining away the “woman who can’t have love or a career” trope by painting Dre as some existential savior for her (all of a sudden, Bow was nearly failing out of school because Dre was just so great – which we still really haven’t seen an inkling of). Again, Black-ish puts the intriguing aspects of its story on the back burner for loud, superficial comedy about unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other: and again, Black-ish misses the mark on an easy story, burying what good comedy it has (the kids really are funny in this episode; I’d rather have twenty minutes of Charlie and Diane making stink faces at each other than this) under a thick layer of bitterness, a trait Black-ish is way too quick to embrace – something that’s becoming a disturbing habit for the show, not a forgettable outlier.
[Photo via ABC]
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