TV Review - Mixed-ish

The hit ABC series, Black-ish (2014), is now in its sixth season. It got really good ratings when it first premiered. It's also been nominated for several Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The series is about an African-American family known as the Johnson family.  It's made stars out of its entire cast like Anthony Anderson who has himself been up for a couple of Emmy Awards as a result. Anderson plays Andre Johnson, the protagonist and patriarch of the family. Last year, the show's creator, Kenya Barris made a spin-off series called Grown-ish (2018), which is essentially a sequel that follows Andre's daughter as she goes to college. Now, Barris along with Peter Saji, a writer-producer on Black-ish and Tracee Ellis Ross who plays Andre's wife, Rainbow Johnson, have created this second spin-off. However, this spin-off isn't a sequel. It's a prequel that depicts Rainbow's childhood.

ABC is possibly trying to capitalize on the success that CBS is having with Young Sheldon (2017), the prequel series to The Big Bang Theory (2007). It also borrows a similar format with voice-over narration from the adult version of the character. I compared Young Sheldon to the nostalgia series that was The Wonder Years (1988). This series isn't trafficking in nostalgia exactly. There isn't much reverence here for the 1980's, as it follows an interracial couple and their biracial children who face racism, sexism and bigotry in other areas as well. It has a tone that is similar to another ABC sitcom, namely Fresh Off the Boat (2015), which is set in the 90's, but that sitcom by Nahnatchka Khan loves the decade in which it's set. This series doesn't seem to be in love with its decade.

Arica Himmel stars as a prepubescent, teenage Rainbow Johnson aka Bow. She's 12 or 13, living in 1985. For all or most of her life, she lived with her parents and siblings on a commune. Her parents were basically hippies, settled in this socialist group. When the group is broken up, due to a government raid for some kind of malfeasance by the group's possible cult-like leaders, Bow's parents then move her into the suburbs of Los Angeles. Until that point, her parents never talked to her about racism and how being biracial would be difficult, especially for someone in the early 80's.

In middle school, she immediately is an outsider, an outcast and misfit. Not only is she an outsider due to her commune, socialist ways, which doesn't conform to the superficial, capitalist culture that is now where she finds herself, but she's also an outsider due to her inability to identify as other a black person or a white person. She can't see herself as either because essentially she's both and until now it's never been an issue and the issue remains in how other people treat her or perceive her. This is of course played out in the halls of school and in its cafeteria in terms of with whom she can sit and socialize. The series is good at pointing out the binary choices, either sitting with the black kids or the white ones, and the binary thinking that was pervasive in that time period and even still to this day.

Tika Sumpter (Nobody's Fool and Southside With You) also stars as Alicia, the mother to Bow. She's a black woman who attended the University of California, Berkeley where she got her law degree. While there, she met and fell in love with a fellow student named Paul, played by Mark-Paul Gosselaar (NYPD Blue and Saved By the Bell) who is a white, college drop-out. They moved to the commune where they lived and had three children where they existed in a bubble of no racism or sexism. With that commune disbanded, they are now forced to live in the suburbs and face the racism and sexism that they've avoided for the better part of a decade. They still want to maintain their issue-free bubble but the real-world that they and the children see and experience won't allow for the bubble.

It's apt that Mariah Carey sings the theme song for this series. She's a famous biracial woman who has dealt with issues of identity just as Bow is doing in this series. It might seem obvious or blunt as Carey croons "In the Mix." It might also seem obvious or blunt how Gary Cole who plays Bow's paternal grandfather, Harrison Jackson is very open and up front with his racism and even homophobia. Harrison is brilliantly counter-balanced with Bow's maternal aunt, Denise, played by Christina Anthony, as she reinforces the children's blackness and is very critical of Paul's whiteness. She's perhaps the Laurence Fishburne of this series, and she is every bit as funny if not more so.

As in Black-ish, there are two young, adorable children who round out the cast. Ethan William Childress plays Johan, the younger brother to Bow. Mykal-Michelle Harris plays Santamonica, the little sister to Bow. They exist mainly to be cute, but they're the ones who are the quickest to assimilate to the ways of the other children in the suburban school. Seeing them stumble in their attempts to assimilate is the source or driving force of the comedy surrounding them. Some of it tries to be too cute like Johan confusing a sink with a toilet, but, in general, the kids are funny appendages here.

Rated TV-PG-L.
Running Time: 30 mins.
Tuesdays at 9PM on ABC.