television
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Underground Season 2 Episode 8 Recap
Bokeem Woodbine’s Daniel has been blinded since we saw him running from the overseer raid from last week. As a skilled craftsmen who depends on his eyes in order to create intricate granite work, it’s particularly disgusting that he would not only be punished in this way for knowing how to read but have the…
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Henrietta Lacks at Johns Hopkins, Slaves at Georgetown, and Compensating Specific Historical Wrongs
On Saturday, HBO aired its original movie The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, an adaptation of the book of the same name. Even if you’ve never read the book (as I haven’t, but am going to) you’ve more than likely heard somebody you know talking about this book, written by Rebecca Skloot, that talks about…
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Underground Season 2 Episode 7 Recap
After dedicating last week to the one-woman show that was Aisha Hinds’ Emmy consideration reel, Underground returns to form with “28”. We check back in with my favorite character whose story-line has yet to be connected to any other character, Daniel. Looks like he’s changed his mind about not teaching other slaves to read and…
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Underground Season 2 Episode 5 Recap
This week’s episode of Underground was titled “Whiteface” and it was so jam-packed with plot that I half-way expected the little boy from that one episode of Atlanta to make an appearance. He doesn’t, by the way, but with the season at the midpoint the show has a lot of ground to cover so I guess…
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Why Paris Dennard Needs To Catch The Fade In The Worst Possible Way
For the past 6 months I’ve struggled to come to terms with the results of the November 8th that put Trump and them in the White House. Even worse, I can’t come to terms with the fact that many of our own people chose death over life and help to put him in there. I’m…
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Underground Season 2 Episode 3 Recap
Daniel’s learned a few more words since we saw him last episode. In addition to “love” we can add “strength” to his list of vocabulary words he’d choose to describe the black women in his life. He’s reading Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech to his daughter and she can’t believe northern black folk…
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Iron Fist Is Too Annoyingly And Inappropriately White To Be Any Good
Iron Fist, for all intents and purposes, is televised gentrification pre-equipped with its own heroin addiction. It is painstakingly everything I hate about Williamsburg, Austin, San Francisco, and anywhere else hipsters meet & breed like drugged addicted rabbits in chinos. Honestly, I can break down many issues with the show like this without spoilers: It’s…
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I Binged Watched ‘This Is Us’ And My Feelings Are In Shambles. I May Never Recover. ZOMG!
(There are very, very light spoilers in this piece. None of them tell you much of about the plot of the show.) On February 23, 2017, I wrote the following status update on Facebook: Well, I guess I need to watch “This Is Us.” I’ve not intentionally avoided it but have yet to see a…
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Why Black-ish Is Winning This Season
For years there has been a progressive erasure of high-quality black, mainstream television sitcoms. It feels as if, after Family Matters and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air went off the air, the idea of black family comedies went right out the door with them. Though many have tried (My Wife and Kids, Reed Between the…