Netflix's Meta Sitcom #blackAF Never Hits Its Stride | TV/Streaming

“#BlackAF’s” odd resistance to engaging viewers begins with its fictional family, an unlikable motley crew of spoiled and overly earnest personalities composed of three girls and three boys. With the exception of Barris’ beleaguered personal assistant Danny (Gil Ozeri), every member of the household is in continual competition with the other. Playing Barris’ fictional wife Joya—the program’s only redeemable character other than Danny—is Rashida Jones, who offers the series’ best acting among wooden performances. 

Much as the sitcom tries otherwise, “#blackAF” is only surface level. Each episode has “slavery” in its title, like "I Know This Is Going Crazy ... But This, Too, Is Because of Slavery," and features voiceovers by Drea to explain how Black fashion, the white gaze, adultification, and a host of other issues relate back to antebellum America. These moments of abridged seriousness are slammed between jokes that have isolated punchlines about Prada and Rolex, lavish vacations to private islands, and luxury cars. The interest level with regards to wealth for us is scant, and most Black audiences are well-aware of how slavery has shaped current Black culture. Instead, one might guess that though the series is called “#blackAF,” its audience resides within an affluent white America. 

Worst yet, no episode coalesces into a succinct arc. For instance, though one episode opens with the family’s celebration of Juneteenth as a framing device, it soon devolves into a gag involving an expensive black and white-speckled painting recently purchased by Barris for his home. His character time-and-again is asked to elucidate the artwork’s meaning, but he never quite squares it. Instead, the symbolism remains perceptibly out of reach. The moment is a metaphor for the entire series, an assemblage of disparate chapters whose greater ambitions are relegated to ambiguous importance. 

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmrKyimq6utc2gZpukkZi4orKMra1mqpWrtqbDjKyrq52Roravs4ynnK2enJ7F