Season 3 Discussion

[Snickerdoodle]

I can't decide what my favorite parts of the show are:

1. Grandma Ruby - she's too much and I love it.  That and the subtle digs that the kids gave her..."iPod Shuffle? Do they even still make that?"
2. Diane and her subtle "preach" behind Ruby when Ruby was riling up the kids.
3. The fact that not only did Diane step on Jack but so did Dre.
4.  Dre insists on calling Vivian "Black Nanny" to her face.
5. Junior taking all those stalking pics of Black Nanny.

The leads are great in this show but the supporting characters really make the show that much more funny.

[Tiger]

Loved Diane whispering to Dre "hope you invested well".

Very strong episode; best in a long time.

[Mama No Life]

Great episode....not only was it funny but it really did touch on some of the issues that confront all employees, because whether you're the one having the children or the one left at work when colleagues go out, the struggle is real.  US has a really warped sense of child leave...it's pathetic, actually.

Ruby is the funniest on the show to me these days...her gathering of the children was hilarious. 

Everyone filing past Black Nanny with their apologies, then Diane "I don't say sorry." lol

Edited March 16, 2017 by Mama No Life
sense not since :/

[Vyk]

9 hours ago, Snickerdoodle said:

Dre insists on calling Vivian "Black Nanny" to her face.

I actually think that's my least favorite thing.  It's yet another example of how Dre has little respect for others.

But I liked everything else.  Loved Rachel again checking Stevens's behavior.  She needs to come around more often.

When Bow didn't make partner, I knew she'd lost out to Joanne, aka "Holiday Hannah."  Though I liked the awkward exchange when she learned Bow's nickname for her.

Dre being behind all of the stuff going missing was a nice twist.  And Anthony's delivery when he told Ruby that he's going to take any money lying around had me rewinding that scene lots of times.

Junior being a stalker to Vivian was creepy, but funny.  "All this proves is that you won't be living near a school."  Indeed, Ruby.  Indeed.

Oh.  Okay.  One other downer.  Connor was back to his revved-up self rather than the dialed-back version he'd been during his last couple of appearances.

But other than that, good episode.

[MaryMitch]

It was nice to see Vivian again, but it's been so long that I'll bet a lot of viewers don't remember her! 

[monakane]

Charlie:  "Eustice looks just like my brother Eustice.  Eustice!!"

Charlie always makes my LOL.  Very funny episode tonight with a lot of truth about being a parent in corporate America.

[ChromaKelly]

Of course Junior is a Hufflepuff.

[ChromaKelly]

On 3/13/2017 at 11:33 PM, jhlipton said:

FWIW, my wife has two of the "Zodiac Barbies" (Taurus and Aries) from 2004, that are somewhat light, but several of the other dolls are.

 

ETA:  One of my Facebook friends can't find Hispanic dolls on the shelves anywhere (or Hispanic Nativities).  That's just not right!

Check out Hearts for Hearts Girls. http://www.hearts4heartsgirls.com/ My daughters had all of them when they were younger. We never did get American Girls. Hearts for Hearts are much more realistic in terms of facial features and hair. They don't all have the same face like AG dolls, which I find creepy.

[RedHawk]

1 hour ago, monakane said:

Charlie:  "Eustice looks just like my brother Eustice.  Eustice!!"

Charlie always makes my LOL.  Very funny episode tonight with a lot of truth about being a parent in corporate America.

Last we saw of Eustace he was sitting alone in the dark after Charlie ran out to pursue the woman he had loved and lost. I want an episode with Eustace! He was introduced as bonding with Junior over their shared nerdiness so I wish they'd bring him back for more interactions with Junior, the Johnson family, and his father. And by "father" I mean Charlie.

[GHScorpiosRule]

I don't know. I find the obtuseness and lack of self-awareness about how there was NO DIVERSITY in the choices of dolls, rather off-putting, and didn't find this episode funny at all. I actually enjoyed the more serious parts of the episode.

What I'm really missing is seeing Earl/Pops.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Another one where I didn't laugh at all. I continue to dislike the way this show has Bow act unprofessionally at work-this week, refusing to give up the defibrillator(?) just to hide her pregnancy so her co-worker could try to save a patient who'd gone into Code Blue.

And I liked the more serious part, what there was of it.

Not a fan of Junior's creepy stalker behavior toward Vivian.

WHERE IS POPS????

[Traveller519]

Diane this whole episode was just terrific with her subtle barbs which you've all already detailed. That's a version of Diane I can support! She's outgrown the precociousness of the first season, but letting her fly with her, "I'm smarter than all of you" but not quite sociopath levels is very much welcomed.

Speaking of Diane's, I love the work Diane Farr does when she shows up, subtlety sitting back and providing this calm but stern presence around the zaniness of the office. I hope she keeps coming around too. I'll always enjoy the way Stevens and his son use overly affectionate terms for one another in the office too.

I enjoyed seeing Dre take control of the family situation with the Vivian witch hunt underway. He can be a man-child at times, but he still knows how to get involved when he needs to.

[meep.meep]

Jack falling and staying down as everyone else tripped over him was funny.

Who did take the iPod shuffle?  And nobody leaves a $20 on the counter and expects to find it there again, do they?  It's like couch quarters.

[Madding crowd]

I love all things with Ruby and Charlie but miss Pops. I don't need Bow acting unprofessional at her job-Dre I could see doing that but not her. It's funny because I am in my 50's (and a white woman), but Ruby and Pops remind me so much of my parents and aunts and uncles. It's almost like they are both kind of retro in a very cool way. 

I continue to love all the kids and I'm happy when Diane gets to be just a normal little girl that is smart and snarky but not a sociopath. I also like that the nanny doesn't take crap from anyone and mostly acts professional. I didn't this episode was super funny,. but I liked it.

[After7Only]

1 hour ago, meep.meep said:

Who did take the iPod shuffle?  And nobody leaves a $20 on the counter and expects to find it there again, do they?  It's like couch quarters.

No one.  Ruby found her Ipod shuffle clipped to the jacket of her track suit.  Where she left it.  

Speaking of track suits,  a definite LOL when the nanny complimented Ruby on her cute track suit and kitten heels outfit.   That is the standard uniform of a few ladies of a certain age that I know... 

[Dee]

The following exchange had me laughing so much I had to rewind the episode three times before I could stop giggling.

Ruby: "Children, Children! Gather! Gather quickly! We have a thief in the house! Vivian stole my shuffle!"

Diane: "You see, the struggle is always real for you!"

Edited March 18, 2017 by Dee

[charmed1]

How in the hell does Rosalind Chao look exactly the same as she did 35 years ago on Diff'Rent Strokes? I'm freaked out. The woman is a vampire.

Two kind of subtle things had me cracking up: Diane eating Vivian's gum after Ruby stole her purse and Jack snatching Junior's phone to check out Junior's stalker photos.

My mom is guilty of wearing sweatpants and ballerina flats. At this point, it's not worth the argument.

Edited March 16, 2017 by charmed1

[Happytobehere]

Great episode.  Highlights include:

Above mentioned Charlie realizing that his son might be his nephew.

Diane being on point in all things -- this is a presentation of her character I can work with.

Jack being stepped on by Diane and remaining on the ground so that Dre stepped on him.

Dre pointing out the preposterous fact that having already been stepped on, Jack remained on the floor, which enabled someone else to step on him.

Ruby being all kinds of awesome -- the show is really making good use of Jennifer Lewis this season.

Problems with the episode:

Junior being made a creepy stalker

Dre's blatant favoritism of Zoe -- I never blame Diane when she lets him know she is not here for Dre, as he is less than loving toward her.

[Irlandesa]

14 hours ago, Vyk said:

When Bow didn't make partner, I knew she'd lost out to Joanne, aka "Holiday Hannah."  Though I liked the awkward exchange when she learned Bow's nickname for her.

I love how they never really specified why Bow lost out.  Was it because of her pregnancy?  Was it because Holiday Hannah was always volunteering to pick up shifts? (And that Bow couldn't---although, she did look like she wanted to volunteer--is a version of the mommy tax.)  Or was it something completely different? It's realistic that it remains a mystery.

I also LOVED that they had Bow give a hypocritical response to Vivian's pregnancy. It's so real.  She wants it to not matter for herself but freaks out at the idea that she'll be short handed while Vivian is out.  It was a cool way of looking at both sides of the maternity leave situation.  And they hit on the paternity leave situation too.  The only little thing I would have been interested is if they gave us a quick Holiday Hannah POV where Bow sees her as always volunteering but from Hannah's perspective, she feels the burden of expectation.  

8 hours ago, Madding crowd said:

I love all things with Ruby and Charlie but miss Pops. I don't need Bow acting unprofessional at her job-Dre I could see doing that but not her.

We've seen a few instances of Bow not always acting professionally at work and I'm okay with that.  For so long, one of the tropes was "Manchild married to responsible woman both personally and professionally."  I think the show does a good job of balancing out both of them that some weeks we see them be ridiculous and other weeks they're great at what they do.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Irlandesa

[Deanie87]

I liked this episode, but I am finding that sometimes I need to take a broad approach to the show, and right now, I'm okay with that.  I do the same thing with some other shows I watch and it works for me.  As an example, on a recent It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the guys were picking on Dee who is the only woman in the gang, per usual, and I always find it hilarious.  They were using horrible words and somehow the C-word came up, and all the guys giggled wildly at how mad women get when you call them that and then they went on about how they like to use it because it makes them feel better about themselves and makes the woman feel bad about themselves, etc..  Now, if you don't watch the show, this probably sounds completely offensive and not funny at all, but believe me, I roared with laughter, and then felt bad, and then laughed again.  It's just that kind of show.  They are horrible people, way over the top, not in on the joke and it is nearly always funny.

But its different with this show, because it isn't always this broad.  It actually tackles some very serious subjects and it does it in a relatively serious way. So I think that they walk a bit of a fine line sometimes.  Objectively, Ruby and Diane are simply awful, as are Charlie and Dre's boss.  But they are hilarious too (well, I still don't love Diane, but that's my bias against precocious sitcom kids), and they always make me laugh.  In this episode, both Dre and Bow acted kind of crappy, and normally it might be something that I found fault with, but I was okay with it in this episode.  When Dre and all of his co-workers were sitting around making fun of dads staying at home with the kids and then calling it the Bitch Plan or whatever it was, I laughed but then got kind of annoyed and then laughed again.  The same thing happened when Bow got hypocritically mad about the Nanny, although to a much lesser extent.  That hasn't happened for me on this show before,  I usually take them as "real people" more or less, generally good people, but with flaws.  But for some reason, some of the over the top behavior stood out to me in a way that usually doesn't in the episodes, even though it really isn't nearly the worst thing that they have done.  

So I guess that this is a long winded way of saying that I think the writers and actors are walking a bit of a tightrope at times and so far they are doing it very well.  I don't mind if the show goes really broad sometimes, but it can be a bit of whiplash because the majority of characters are generally good and mean well, and there are times when it veers a tiny bit into "After School Special" territory, and then they can turn around and be so over the top in terms of character behavior.  So as long as they stay away from the sitcom curse of making the characters dial their most marked characteristic up to 11, then they can show some of the worst aspects of the "nicer" characters and I don't have a problem with it.  Does any of this make sense?  LOL.

[jhlipton]

9 hours ago, ChromaKelly said:

Of course Junior is a Hufflepuff.

How could you expect anything else?

8 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Another one where I didn't laugh at all. I continue to dislike the way this show has Bow act unprofessionally at work-this week, refusing to give up the defibrillator(?) just to hide her pregnancy so her co-worker could try to save a patient who'd gone into Code Blue.

It threw me out of the episode for a bit when he died -- could he have lived if the crash cart got there a minute earlier?  In other words, did Bow kill a patient?

[LydiaMoon1]

How does Diane manage to look so angelic while refusing to renounce nunchucking family members other than Bow?

Edited March 17, 2017 by LydiaMoon1

[LydiaMoon1]

19 hours ago, Traveller519 said:

Diane this whole episode was just terrific with her subtle barbs which you've all already detailed. That's a version of Diane I can support! She's outgrown the precociousness of the first season, but letting her fly with her, "I'm smarter than all of you" but not quite sociopath levels is very much welcomed.

Yes..... 

 

14 hours ago, Happytobehere said:

Diane being on point in all things -- this is a presentation of her character I can work with.

.. and Yes. 

Between the subtle changes recently made to the way Diane is being characterized to the colorism acknowledgement of last week, it seems like the showrunners really have their ear to the ground when it comes to this show.

[Dagny]

On 3/16/2017 at 5:39 AM, Vyk said:

When Bow didn't make partner, I knew she'd lost out to Joanne, aka "Holiday Hannah."  Though I liked the awkward exchange when she learned Bow's nickname for her.

I can't confirm it, but it looked like Holiday Hannah was different in the flash back scenes than in the partner scene. The only reason I noticed it that partner Joanne looks like Amy Acker and the flash back Holiday didn't look like Amy.  Did anyone else notice this?

[tennisgurl]

I'm glad they got into the maternity/paternity leave thing, which is a really interesting topic, but I'm still just not into the pregnancy stuff. It just doesn't seem to have any point, and they could deal with the pregnancy issues (like baby names or maternity leave) with Tyra Banks or Black Nanny, which would be more natural than having Bow become pregnant, and giving us a inevitable baby.

I do like that they have found more of a groove with Diane lately. She's precocious and manipulative, but she is also a little girl and not a budding serial killer.

[jhlipton]

3 hours ago, LydiaMoon1 said:

How does Diane manage to look so angelic while refusing to renounce nunchucking family members other than Bow?

It's a gift!

[Happytobehere]

On 3/16/2017 at 1:16 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

WHERE IS POPS????

Laurence Fishburne has launched a podcast that he runs along with Lorenz Tate.  It is a throwback to the radio days where they are telling a serialized story about an African American community.  It is really good and draws you in almost immediately. The name of the podcast is Bronzville, it is available on iTunes and has actually spawned its own fan cast of people coving each serialized episode.  

In addition to running the cast, he serves as an actor on it (his voice sounds so smooth), so does Tracee Ellis Ross.  I imagine getting the podcast underway and running it along with continuing to do other acting jobs is taking up a bulk of his time.

But yeah, I too anxiously await the return of Pops.

Edited March 18, 2017 by Happytobehere
Edited to add the name of the podcast.

[mansonlamps]

I liked most of the episode except Diane saying she doesn't say she's sorry.  I have a friend who refuses to apologize, even when she knows she's wrong, and it's one seriously obnoxious characteristic.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Quote

Laurence Fishburne has launched a podcast that he runs along with Lorenz Tate.  It is a throwback to the radio days where they are telling a serialized story about an African American community.  It is really good and draws you in almost immediately. The name of the podcast is Bronzville, it is available on iTunes and has actually spawned its own fan cast of people coving each serialized episode.  

Thank you for mentioning this! I've just subscribed.

Quote

Between the subtle changes recently made to the way Diane is being characterized to the colorism acknowledgement of last week, it seems like the showrunners really have their ear to the ground when it comes to this show.

Yes. I'm particularly glad they're trying to clean up the mess they made with Diane. Having Bow get in on the "Diane is evil" bandwagon was almost the last straw for me.

[RedHawk]

On March 10, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Boofish said:

Jack is a really good dancer/performer :). Unfortunately his talent was marred when the song he chose (by I think Kayne) contained the N word

Yeah, he's good at those things but what else? He's the "good" twin and the most empathetic and kind of the kids. I hope soon his secret superpower will be revealed, kind of like with Jack-Jack in "The Incredibles".

[hatchetgirl]

This one hit hard. I always excelled at work pre-baby, but once he was born, I was treated like an outcast. Demoted and told I bring nothing to the table. I never noticed overt sexism in the work place until this. Also, with Bow wanting it all but not wanting the nanny to do the same is so mean girl! Finally, it's so offensive that Dre calls her black nanny. Way to keep an uppity black woman in her place. Can you imagine if Bow was called black doctor? Just unacceptable.  

[topanga]

10 hours ago, RedHawk said:

Yeah, he's good at those things but what else? He's the "good" twin and the most empathetic and kind of the kids. I hope soon his secret superpower will be revealed, kind of like with Jack-Jack in "The Incredibles".

At school, isn't he the one with lots of friends because he's funny and charming? 

And I assume he still plays basketball? I remember him being pretty good last season. 

And what about the Valentine's Day episode where he advised Junior on how to act around girls? I think he might have good fashion sense. 

 

On 3/9/2017 at 6:41 PM, Vyk said:

What I don't get is this episode starting with Diane's birthday party.  Shouldn't it also have been Jack's birthday?

I know, right? I would have loved a throwaway line from Bow about the twins wanting separate birthday parties now that they're getting older. 

 

On 3/9/2017 at 2:30 PM, peeayebee said:

Other guy at work: What the hell happened to the Debarges?

That line cracked me up, along with his initial line about why the DeBarges where in the ad. 

[topanga]

On 2/18/2017 at 4:37 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

Once again, Dre is a selfish baby. He only wanted to help his friends after (1) years of not seeing most of them (2) one of them died and (3) because he expected them to thank him and be grateful. If you truly want to help someone, you do it to HELP THEM, not because you want recognition for it. And if you really want to help someone, you actually help them instead of just giving them whatever is laying around your house (like your wife's bike).

We have seen Bow make dinner before (and healthy stuff like quinoa, which Ruby and Pops complained about) so it seems ridiculous to retcon that she doesn't even know which appliance is the toaster. I wish instead of making her seem incompetent in household matters like cooking and making costumes, they had addressed it a different way, like different people have different talents.

Agree with everything you said about Dre. But I did crack up during the scene in the restaurant when Dre started telling his friends what a great guy he is and ended up yelling, "F*@# Tony!" Dead Tony. 

One thing I hate about this show is that every week, there's some new example of Bow being the butt of every joke. All of a sudden, she can't cook--when, as you said, we regularly see her prepare food for her family. And they eat it without complaint unless Ruby or Earl's freeloading asses make a comment about the food. Her kids constantly tease and disrespect her--to her face. (All except Junior). And she's a competent surgeon (don't know why Zoey called her an anesthesiologist), but in the past few episodes, we see that her colleagues don't respect her as a doctor. Most of them don't even know her name. She doesn't have any friends. Her ex-boyfriends call her crazy. I rarely see her and Johan interact--so I'm not sure how he feels about her. The only person who seems to love and accept Bow unconditionally is her dad.  

[GHScorpiosRule]

5 minutes ago, topanga said:

 

And she's a competent surgeon (don't know why Zoey called her an anesthesiologist), but in the past few episodes, we see that her colleagues don't respect her as a doctor. Most of them don't even know her name. 

@topanga-I think Show finally decided to make Bow an anesthesiologist a few weeks back when they did a flashback: Bow got distracted from providing anesthesia while playing on her phone and the patient started to wake up (during surgery (!)) I think it was. And Bow giggled and started to pay attention. That kind of shit bugs me. She's a competent doctor and she's almost always shown to be screwing up at the expense of the patient. I don't find it amusing or funny.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

16 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

28 minutes ago, topanga said:

 

And she's a competent surgeon (don't know why Zoey called her an anesthesiologist), but in the past few episodes, we see that her colleagues don't respect her as a doctor. Most of them don't even know her name. 

@topanga-I think Show finally decided to make Bow an anesthesiologist a few weeks back when they did a flashback: Bow got distracted from providing anesthesia while playing on her phone and the patient started to wake up (during surgery (!)) I think it was. And Bow giggled and started to pay attention. That kind of shit bugs me. She's a competent doctor and she's almost always shown to be screwing up at the expense of the patient. I don't find it amusing or funny.

Wasn't Bow an anesthesiologist when she took Diane to work?

[possibilities]

Fishburne also starred in Madiba (miniseries that recently aired on BET, about Nelson Mandela, the ANC, and the struggle against Apartheid). I don't know when it filmed, but I imagine it took quite a bit of his time to do it.

Of course, if they wanted him around for Black-ish and had him on contract as a regular, he wouldn't be able to take other roles. But maybe he had the clout to negotiate more freedom in his contract even if they did want him. He was quite a get for the show when it was getting started.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I'm guessing that one of the reasons he isn't a series regular is that he wanted the freedom to do other projects rather than being locked down to playing a secondary character for seven years. It's the same reason that Chris Noth chose not to be a regular on The Good Wife. He was able to continue shooting movies and a mini series while guest starting on TGW for seven seasons. Connot Paolo did the same, declining to become a regular on Gossip Girl which allowed him to become a series regular on Revenge  

In addition, Laurence Fishburne was already a regular on Hannibal when the pilot for Black-ish was shot so he was contractually not allowed to be a series regular for a second show (but he was legally allowed to be a guest star). Black-ish began airing in 2014 and Hannibal wasn't canceled until June 2015, so for the third season of Hannibal and the first season of Black-ish (which were filmed around the same time), he was recurring for both shows

[MaryMitch]

In the Dec 12 2014 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Tracee Ellis Ross (Rainbow ) wrote a short blurb "I Saw My Hair On TV". (page 18) In it, she states she is an anesthesiologist.

Edited March 19, 2017 by MaryMitch

[Guest]

I laughed at the one guy asking Dre, "You're going to take a paternity leave after the baby's born?"  And Charlie saying, "You mean a paternity test."  

I thought Fishburne might've been involved in creating the show since he's billed as a producer but it looks like he was cast later so was probably given the producer credit as more a concession to get him.  

[Irlandesa]

10 hours ago, possibilities said:

But maybe he had the clout to negotiate more freedom in his contract even if they did want him. He was quite a get for the show when it was getting started.

Here's an article about Laurence's involvement in the show.  Basically, his production company, Cinema Gypsy, is the production company behind the show. The creator envisioned him as pops and that's how he came on board as an actor but he was involved long before anyone else other than the creator.  So I would gather he gets to dictate how much he's in the show from an acting perspective.  They might have gone in a different direction in casting had they known just how involved Dre's parents would be but in season one, both he and Jennifer Lewis were recurring.  She was upped to regular in Season 2.

[LydiaMoon1]

On 3/18/2017 at 9:59 AM, mansonlamps said:

I liked most of the episode except Diane saying she doesn't say she's sorry.  I have a friend who refuses to apologize, even when she knows she's wrong, and it's one seriously obnoxious characteristic.

See, I loved that part.  That whole scene was hysterical to me because Ruby also refused to apologize.  In fact, if you take Diane and fill her with pious hypocrisy, you get Ruby.  They are just alike. They're both incorrigible, but both make me cackle.

[topanga]

The show's creator said in an interview that she's a surgeon. An in Season 1, she talked about performing surgery. I guess the writers went in a different direction 

ETA: as an anesthesiologist--or a surgeon- she'd have to be at work at 5 or 6 in the morning. Wouldn't be seeing the kids off to school. Only in TV land, I guess.

Edited March 22, 2017 by topanga

[topanga]

On 1/5/2017 at 11:02 AM, DearEvette said:

 

This was funny.

I love that for all her precociousness we were reminded just how young Diane is and that looking at sexy things on the computer freaked her out completely.  Her reading the old encyclopedias "Who is Ronald Regan and why does this say he is the current president" was funny.  And so relatable because I think our family set of Encyclopedia's are just right around when Bill Clinton became president.

I also appreciated that we got to all the breadcrumbs that led Diane to seeing porn -- especially when she walks into the house and sees Junior and Zoe and asks them 'what is sex?' and they simply say 'Google it" very disinterestedly. and she shrugs and says "ok."

 

And I like that we were reminded how smart Diane is. The show seemed to have dropped that aspect of her character. The way she poured through the encyclopedias and had intelligent questions really  cracked me up.  "Why isn't anyone doing anything about East Germany?" 

On 1/5/2017 at 0:10 PM, gesundheit said:

Out of curiosity (because I'm a bit out of the loop), what's the fan backlash people are referring to about the workplace scenes earlier this season?

Did anyone answer this for you? Just chiming in to say 'I'm not sure.' This ep aired before 'Lemons,' correct? Maybe people were criticizing the fact that this season, Dre's co-workers aren't just clueless or ignorant anymore. At times they can be blatantly racist. 

[topanga]

On 2/10/2017 at 1:48 AM, Sile said:

ETA I just looked up Hightower to make sure I got the apostrophe in the right place and learned that he goes by his middle name and his first name is actually Qualin.  He has a sister named Quenette.

I'm sorry to my fellow brothers and sisters who might get offended, but parents who name their children Quinette and Qualin Devonta must not want their children to work anyplace besides fast food restaurants or retail establishments. Or the NFL, I suppose. But could they know when Don'ta was born that he'd have athletic talent?

Edited March 22, 2017 by topanga

[GHScorpiosRule]

5 hours ago, topanga said:

The show's creator said in an interview that she's a surgeon. An in Season 1, she talked about performing surgery. I guess the writers went in a different direction 

ETA: as an anesthesiologist--or a surgeon- she'd have to be at work at 5 or 6 in the morning. Wouldn't be seeing the kids off to school. Only in TV land, I guess.

Yeah, I remember the show flipping back and forth over Bow being a surgeon or anesthesiologist-in one episode (season one, I think), Bow told a guy how she saved his life; then we got inferences that maybe she wasn't a surgeon but an anesthesiologist. It's stupid. I guess they thought more comedy could be mined if they showed Bow "screwing up" as an anesthesiologist? Which I don't find funny, at all.

[ridethemaverick]

Unpopular opinion: Boys 2 Men was more pop than R&B to me and wouldn't be in my top 5 at all. I'm definitely with Dre on Jodeci being number 1. *Runs away*

Great episode. My husband and I had similar conversations each time I was pregnant. African American culture is only about 250 years old so it makes sense that we're still working out the kinks in what we consider cultural. What doesn't make sense is the persistent anti-blackness in this country that leads us to have to have these conversations in the first place. There is no real difference between Natasha and Latasha except that the former is Russian (?) and the latter is an African American derivative. Hopefully society where catch up soon so that the Latashas and Devantes aren't penalized for their names. 

[jhlipton]

On 3/20/2017 at 10:53 AM, LydiaMoon1 said:

In fact, if you take Diane and fill her with pious hypocrisy, you get Ruby.

I love that!

[TobinAlbers]

Loved that it was Josh of all people who was the one suggesting paternity leave, that he didn't cave to peer pressure when they all laughed at him, and that he was so excited that Dre was indeed taking it. He was hiding his thumbs up from the others but he was cutely supportive.

Love that they'd save a ton on food and toliet paper when he's gone.

There're some layers to that, Josh. Sometimes.

Edited March 23, 2017 by TobinAlbers

[RedHawk]

Just saw the rerun of this episode and it takes on so much more significance now that we're 60+ days into the Trump era.

Interesting to see Stevens' son Connie introduced, it was funny. Stevens told him "That's 'home talk'" and then made the comment that Obama let Bin Laden sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. "Fake!" they said out loud, then turned to each other and said, "But really it's true." OMG, this is where we actually are now. How did we get here?

Pops, Bow's brother, and Jack were great together.

[topanga]

Dre didn't annoy me as much as usual. But I didn't like him saying Zoey was his favorite because she shared his sense of style and...something else superficial. Why doesn't he care about who his kids are as people? Diane is smart. So is Junior--he's a grade ahead in school. And he's student body president. Jack is a thoughtful and considerate child (usually) who also has a good sense of style for a little boy. 

So glad to see Black Nanny! I know a poster above didn't like it, but I found it hilarious. I love that Dre kept saying, "She wants all of this" and Bow needing constant reassurance that Vivian isn't having an affair with Bow.  Regina Hall continues to look great. Her skin is so beautiful. 

Did Junior ever find his wand, by the way? I don't remember Dre saying that he had it.