Netflix's #blackAF struggles to get beyond Kenya Barris’ penchant for self-aggrandizement

The Undefeated

The Black-ish creator's semi-autobiographical comedy #blackAF is yet "another comedy culled from Barris’ own life, this time dressed up in Curb Your Enthusiasm drag," says Soraya Nadia McDonald, who adds: "It becomes apparent that Barris has created a show with no real thesis or analysis, other than tangentially tying his own First World problems to structural racism with the world’s most tenuous spool of string. This is not to say that wealthy black people don’t experience racism, because they do. But Barris insists on branding his show about a narcissistic, malcontent father who obsesses about his blackness and the blackness of his family, as a show about blackness, when those two things aren’t actually the same. #blackAF isn’t a show about blackness, it’s a show about one person’s near-pathological need to keep up appearances. It’s a conceit that has legs — there’s an entire genre of television farces built around that very thing, from Veep to Keeping Up Appearances to Jeeves and Wooster to Avenue 5. #blackAF struggles to get beyond Barris’ penchant for self-aggrandizement, even though it’s supposedly filmed through the eyes of his documentarian daughter, which is how it fails where those other comedies succeed. It’s a microgenre that requires an intense level of critical self-awareness, and that’s the thing #blackAF lacks." McDonald adds: "There’s another thing that makes this show a poor facsimile of Curb Your Enthusiasm: There’s no Susie Essman equivalent to remind Kenya that he’s full of it. Drea comes closest, but she lacks the authority and perspective of adulthood. Kenya’s obsessed with black essentialism, but not enough to realize that it’s not nearly the problem he makes it out to be. So his random, mundane issues get shoehorned into unrelated things, like Juneteenth. Kenya says that he’s constantly thinking about the white gaze, but that’s just an excuse to avoid any real self-examination, especially since he never delves deeper into any of the issues surrounding race that he brings up."

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• #blackAF is art imitating art imitating life: "If you’re at all familiar with ABC’s black-ish, then watching Netflix’s #blackAF might feel like a surreal experience to you," says LaToya Ferguson. "Not just because it’s created by and starring Kenya Barris, creator and former showrunner of ABC’s black-ish, but because it’s pretty apparent throughout the eight-episode first season that this new series is essentially Barris’ undistilled, unapologetic, unperturbed by network television notes and interference version of black-ish. In fact, it’s hard not to think that this is the show Barris wanted to make all along but couldn’t under the umbrella of his Disney overlords." Ferguson adds: "Originally titled Black Excellence, #blackAF even manages to follow black-ish’s lead in terms of censoring titles that aren’t exactly good either way. (Neither show has a good title—and in the case of #blackAF, neither its current nor original title capture the spirit of what the show is—but sometimes you do want to go ahead and call them 'black sh*t' and 'black AS F*CK.') As a show ultimately about a super-wealthy black family flaunting that wealth, now is an especially strange time to watch #blackAF, when people are struggling even more to make ends meet. And it’s not just because of the characters’ expenses when it comes to cars, meals, clothes (so many designer labels in the wardrobe), childcare—the Barris 'real-life approach to parenting' apparently relies a lot on 'the help' doing the parenting—but because the series looks and clearly is just as obscenely expensive as everything these characters pay for on it."
• #blackAF tries to be to Black-ish what Curb Your Enthusiasm is to Seinfeld: "There are an awful lot of echoes and repetitions: themes that might have been explored on black-ish, story lines and character dynamics that already were explored on blackish," says James Poniewozik. "#blackAF finds its voice immediately. It takes longer to suggest its purpose — that is, what Barris can say here that he couldn’t and hasn’t already. The Curb of it all is amplified by Barris playing himself. (I’ll call the character 'Kenya,' to make the distinction that the show productively blurs.) (Anthony) Anderson is an actor of tremendous range and energy, who can make André Johnson equally delightful and exasperating. Barris is … a great writer. As a performer, he’s low-key, almost no-key, which helps to define Kenya: an athleisured Hollywood rich guy who calls everyone 'dude' — his kids, his assistant — and who is quiet-spoken but the opposite of mellow."
• #blackAF is just a drab vanity project: "While it’s dubbed a family comedy series, and other characters get ample screen time, it’s ultimately Barris’ show," says Tambay Obenson. "His presence and point of view dominate, which is to the series’ detriment, because he isn’t particularly well served by a script that calls for him to stay in a near-constant state of exasperation, making lengthy observations about race, gender, money, family and other topics, that are likely meant to be clever and funny, but are instead mostly exhausting. Barris is also clearly not an actor, and while his performance is serviceable for the series’ glossy reality TV show aesthetic, it does become a distraction, especially in scenes that demand more than an impassive line delivery. It’s a mystery why he didn’t cast an actor to play the part, as he did for every other role in the series (not that all the other performances are particularly great, save for Rashida Jones as his wife, Joya). And so it feels very much like a vanity project for him."
• #blackAF is too obsessed with flaunting the wealth of its characters: "The show, absent soul or love, lards itself with luxury goods — a strange decision in an era where the audience’s awareness of celebrities’ financial status relative to viewers’ has not been as piquant in a generation," says Daniel D'Addario. "On Black-ish, the family is wealthy and materialistic, but at a recognizably human scale and for character reasons that track: A generation removed from privation, they can tend to go a little overboard. There’s overboard and then there’s this show, in which the family sneers at anyone who lacks what they have. Explaining why first class is not good enough, Barris tells the camera, 'I kind of feel like the people in the back of the plane are animals now. That’s like a cargo hold.' The Fiji vacation is laughably extravagant and yet — transpiring in among the world’s most beautiful places — unimaginatively shot, with the camera holding on bottles of Moet champagne longer than on the blue water and white sand Barris traveled half the globe to find. If Black-ish’s commodity fetish is at times aspirational — hey, Anthony Anderson’s sneaker collection is enviable — this show plays sadder than it even knows, depicting lives and intellects choked off by big piles of stuff."
• #blackAF is able to grow once it stops trying to be Black-ish: "The series is self-aware when it comes to these similarities," says Patrick Gomez. "Barris, playing a version of himself, even watches—and compliments himself about—black-ish at one point. But fans of Barris’ ABC work will likely find much of #blackAF’s eight episodes redundant. In the first few episodes, Barris’ Kenya and Jones’ Joya grapple with white gaze; the family celebrates and educates about Juneteenth; and Joya discusses the disproportionate adultification of young Black girls with her daughters. And while those are all important subjects that deserve to be discussed far more often, #blackAF doesn’t present them in ways all that new or different from Barris’ ABC sitcom. But something happens about halfway through the season. Perhaps counterintuitively, given the above criticism, #blackAF gets better when it gets closer to Barris’ real life, transitioning into an intriguing look at being Black in Hollywood."
• #blackAF is confounding it its attempt to be a more personal and critical rewrite of Black-ish: "The air here is thick with narcissism and self-absorption, in such quantities and misfired jokes as to make any viewer, black or otherwise, struggle with the show’s tone and intent," says Hank Stuever. "Barris is not nearly a strong enough actor to convey the complicated nuances he’s going for here, while it’s up to Jones to remind viewers that they are indeed watching a comedy." Stuever adds: "This show sands off any trace of Blackish’s accessible sweetness and general appeal, resulting in a take that is, at first, overly caustic. #BlackAF meanders with an uncertain aim, in episodes that are always a little too long. This unevenness might possibly be a deliberate move, in which Barris is suggesting that viewers (and critics, who come in for a pointed drubbing from a big-name filmmaker who makes a highly effective cameo appearance) should not come here expecting comfort or the same old laughs."
• Rashida Jones is happy #blackAF let her play a different kind of character: "I think what’s nice about this character for me is that I get to play something different," says Jones. "I’ve played a lot of very supportive, sane, thoughtful, generous, unconditional friends and girlfriends and wives. And I kind of get to be selfish on this show. It’s fun to know who I am in a way that I’m not willing to compromise for anybody else. I’ve been very lucky to have a whole career of people who sort of exist in relation to other people, but Joya, on the show, is trying to figure out who she is — and she’s making some mistakes along the way. For me, career-wise, it’s nice to play somebody who’s doing that kind of searching in a way that is unapologetic."
• Kenya Barris made #blackAF as a mockumentary because he's not an actor: "Well I’m a huge Curb Your Enthusiasm and Modern Family fan," he says. "I think they are two of the sort of seminal comedies of the last 20 years, and I feel like there's a freedom to being able to tell stories that way. And I wanted to make sure — how do you differentiate this from a show that was already on about my family? One of the ways was to not put an actor playing me. Another way was to tell it from a different point of view, which was my daughter's point of view. Another way was because I think there's something about that sort of docu, mockumentary style that makes you feel a little bit more attached and in with the stories. Because I was trying to do a much more real version of what this was, I wanted you to feel like you were into the stories and coming from a different place, if that makes any sense."
• Barris on playing a version of himself: “There are versions of this character that are very close to who I am,” he says. “I do feel like this is a cross between the writer’s room version of me and the actor version of me, in terms of saying exactly what is on my mind. Larry David is not Larry David in Curb. But that person lives within his mind.”