Blistering wit, knowing irony

The show sometimes squanders the suspense leading up to or following those incidents, but over the course of the season, they provide a series of challenges for handsome student body president Troy (Brandon P Bell) and social climber Coco (Antoinette Robertson), who are both committed to winning a series of games that are decidedly rigged against them.

Like Troy’s father, a dean at Winchester, they are determined to work inside the system to create a more tolerant university community.

Sam and members of other African-American student groups, whose willingness to challenge the status quo varies, often question whether the kind of change the most moderate students are willing to accept consists of nothing more than a PR spin and window dressing.

As it relaxes into the students’ lives, and explores their feelings about lovers of other races, the semi-compromised state of student journalism on campus and the mental cost of always bracing for the next round of idiotic statements from aggrieved white bros.

Dear White People does an increasingly assured job of depicting the amused frustration and disillusioned exhaustion of these students.

Barry Jenkins, the director of Moonlight, helms one episode that gets at the heart of a black man’s emotional turmoil so well that it’s impossible not to be moved. Two of the quieter students – the ones who observe everything and miss nothing – should get even more screen time next season (if there is one):

DeRon Horton’s Lionel, a writer who freezes in social situations, is a subtle delight, and Ashley Blaine Featherson is pitch-perfect as Joelle, the friend whom everyone relies on but no one truly sees.

With any luck, Lionel, Joelle and Reggie, a character who pines for Sam and who also feels unseen (except by the campus cops), will all get more to do if classes at Winchester are back in session in 2018.

Despite a few first-year wobbles, second year can’t come soon enough. – Variety

PICTURE: NETFLIX Logan Browning, seated, in Dear White People.