Hidden ‘Black-ish’ episode more powerful in 2020
In 2018 there was a storm raging outside the window of the Johnson family home. In 2020, it’s raging even harder.
Two years ago, ABC infamously and mysteriously shelved “Please Baby, Please,” a Season 4 episode of its family sitcom “Black-ish” that tackled issues including President Donald Trump, Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police brutality, climate change and white supremacists. It was a watershed moment: Just months after the episode was shelved, “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris left the network for a lucrative deal with Netflix.
Barris has hinted in recent months that the episode would be made available, and on Monday it popped up on Hulu (which, like ABC, is owned by Disney) as “Season 4 Episode 99.”
In “Please Baby,” Dre (Anthony Anderson) tells his infant son, DeVante, a bedtime story to soothe him to sleep on a stormy night (the title is taken from a children’s book written by Spike Lee and wife Tonya Lewis Lee, and the filmmaker lends his voice to the narration).
But this bedtime story recounts the tumultuous social and political news of DeVante’s first year on Earth. The rest of the Johnson family has trouble sleeping, kept awake by their own worries. The episode mixes animation and allegory (Trump is a cartoon ruler referred to as “The Shady King”) with modern and historical news footage. Like so many other heavy “Black-ish” installments, the Johnsons discuss serious social issues among themselves, educating as they discuss and debate.
Junior (Marcus Scribner) doesn’t think athletes should kneel during the national anthem, a topic of a forthcoming student council meeting, but he respects his classmates’ right to do so. Pops (Laurence Fishburne) and Dre debate the reasons for the rise of white supremacist groups and open racism. Preteens Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin) are terrified of climate change but have resigned themselves to cleaning up the messes of older generations. Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) is scared of mass shootings and violence at schools, concerts and other public places, noting that home feels like the only safe space.
“Please Baby” is “Black-ish” at its best. No current TV series so succinctly – and with so much nuance – deconstructs hot-button issues like Kaepernick’s protests or explains why Black pride is OK and white pride isn’t, in the historical context of slavery and racism. And while the episode is meant to teach, it never lectures or scolds. It has a point of view, certainly, but it also lays out facts and asks the viewer to pick them up, learn from them and grow into someone better. There is fear here, but also comfort, and a reminder that family offers hope.
It’s easy to wonder which moment ABC found so objectionable about the episode that it was unceremoniously yanked from the schedule. Was it the image of the Shady King throwing paper towels down at his Black and brown subjects, as Trump did when distributing rolls in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria? Was it Dre drawing direct parallels from a racist backlash to President Barack Obama’s election to Trump’s ascendancy? Was it just that, back in 2018, corporations weren’t posting Instagram graphics declaring that Black lives actually do matter?
“In November 2017, we made an episode of “Black-ish” entitled ‘Please, Baby, Please.’ We were one year post-election and coming to the end of a year that left us, like many Americans, grappling with the state of our country and anxious about its future. Those feelings poured onto the page, becoming 22 minutes of television that I was, and still am, incredibly proud of,” Barris tweeted.