Blackish

Blackish, American television sitcom that aired on ABC from 2014 to 2022. It depicts an affluent Black family whose patriarch, Andre (Dre) Johnson (played by Anthony Anderson), questions whether his family’s success has come at the cost of losing their African American cultural identity. Although a comedy, the show dealt with contemporary issues, such as police brutality, systemic racism, and politics.

Premise

Set in Los Angeles, Blackish begins with the lead character Dre delivering a voice-over summing up his mixed feelings about his career achievements: “Sometimes I worry that in an effort to make it, Black folks have dropped a little bit of their culture, and the rest of the world has picked it up.” He has just been promoted at his job at an advertising agency to head the “Urban Division” but is questioning the firm’s motivations. He is also miffed that his eldest son, Junior (played by Marcus Scribner), instead of playing basketball, the sport Dre played as a kid, has taken up field hockey, which Dre seems to think is a women’s sport.

Early reception

Blackish’s premiere had a good first showing, drawing 11 million viewers, and received positive reviews from critics. ABC immediately gave the sitcom a full-season order. Series creator Kenya Barris told Huffington Post, “We wanted to make this show the same way for me, growing up, The Cosby Show was like, ‘Oh my God! I want that to be my family,’” referring to the family sitcom that ran from 1984 to 1992, starring the now-disgraced comedian Bill Cosby. Barris went on, “We wanted to make this show aspirational, and we wanted to build off of what Dr. Cosby did in a really positive way.”

Cast and characters

In addition to Dre and his eldest son, Blackish’s characters include matriarch Rainbow Johnson (played by Tracee Ellis Ross), an anesthesiologist, and Dre’s father (Laurence Fishburne), who they call Pops. The rest of the family comprises Pops’s estranged wife and Dre’s mother, Ruby (Jenifer Lewis), Dre and Rainbow’s eldest daughter, Zoey Johnson (Yara Shahidi), and twins Diane Johnson (Marsai Martin) and Jack Johnson (Miles Brown). The family welcomes a baby, Devante Johnson (played by twin actors August Gross and Berlin Gross), in the fourth season. The series led to a pair of spinoffs: Grownish (2018–24), following Zoey as she goes off to college, and Mixedish (2019–21), chronicling Rainbow’s adolescence in a biracial family during the 1980s. Blackish was nominated for a number of awards during its run, including Emmys and Golden Globes for comedy series, lead actress, and lead actor.

Pushing the limits

In its effort to confront issues of race and class, Blackish occasionally made ABC pause. The network pulled an episode from season four, called “Please, Baby, Please” (2018), during which Dre tries to calm his inconsolable baby with a story that refers to U.S. Pres. Donald Trump as the “Shady King,” who had replaced the beloved “Prince Barry,” invoking former U.S. president Barack Obama. The episode also shows other family members expressing angst about dangers such as rising white supremacy and tensions with North Korea. The episode later aired on streaming service Hulu in 2020. Trump had earlier objected to the show’s name, tweeting a week after the pilot aired in 2014, “How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled ‘Blackish’? Can you imagine the furor of a show, ‘Whiteish’! Racism at highest level?”