Dear White People - General Discussion

[MelloYellow]

More Kelsey & Coco!

[DearEvette]

I finished episode 8.

I can't believe how much Brooke is annoying me this season.  I liked her so much last season and this season she is just asking for a throat punch every time she is on screen.  I am madly disliking how she is forcing the Muffy thing.

Reggie's storyline is my least favorite this season.  I am just not feeling his obsession with Moses.  And maybe it is because Blair Underwood has played the slippery, smooth villain before but I can't help but feel there is something off about Moses. 

But I get that it falls within the bigger theme of the show about students and their idols:  Sam & The Laverne Cox characters, Coco and that awful professor.  In her own way she is as desperate as Reggie.  And I hate seeing my fabulous CoCo like that.

Speaking of Coco's prof -- man, I HATE professors like that.  I had a few of those in college, especially grad school.  And you just have to grit your teeth.  But I got some own back in my professional capacity.   I worked as a consultant/short-term contractor at this one college as an IT and data analyst for the Provost and this place had their fair share of these types of professors.  Some of them tried it with me.  The condescension was rolling off them in waves.  And yet, they needed me more than I needed them and I let them know it in big ways and small. 

I have never heard of 'Mafia' before but that game looked fun.  I love how brutally funny everyone was during the game.  Even Reggie's roommate who is a fun little addition to the crew.

Lionel's walk on the freaky side is killing me.  I wonder if they had parties like that when I was in school?

This season gets stronger as it goes on.  And the additional cast is really making the show richer.

[DearEvette]

Ah, I finally finished it.

I have to admit I was not feeling the first few episodes, but as the season went on it settled into itself, got funnier and deeper.  Also it was really rather subversive.

With the Muffy/Moses situation I honestly think Simien was making a point about how the black community should not automatically rally around iconic or heroic black figures if they are clearly doing wrong.  But also in having the central victim be a white woman with her champions being mostly black women, he was also amplifying the oft made point that black women will fight for the greater good, not just self interest, even when history has shown that if the situation was reversed, white women would not often do the same.

Another  point he made in a subversive way, was how easy everything was for Gabe.  Yeah he struggled because his family lost their money, but when he basically lied to get the scholarship, and he tried to give it back, how easy everyone made it for him to keep his lie.  The message of course is how much the system is rigged to allow a white man to fail upward.  I did love how much joy Sam got in needling him the entire time!

I was expecting some big climactic push in the final chapter and was a little disappointed we didn't get one.  I will say the role reversal/fakeout in the beginning of the episode freaked me a little.  Kinda odd seeing Gabe as Reggie and Reggie as Gabe.  Also I did not recognize Kurt in those stupid braids, but Muffy looked good in hers.  But I loved that last big group conversation between everyone.  What a great scene as they all processed everything together and Reggie looked like he was finally himself again.

I liked all the additional characters who made a strong mark, but didn't manage to sideline the core characters. D'Unte was the breakout.

I love how absolutely everybody figured out Lionel was Chester.  LOL.

Did we even see Sorbet once?

Brooke managed to redeem herself a little bit in the last ep, although I still think she is a pill now.

[Empress1]

I had a real, full-on belly laugh when Reggie went to Jo's room in the 10th episode and they were having it out and Sam was on the bed with headphones on crying about the Shamu documentary. "I'm ready to make some changes to my life ... oh."

[wales260]

I know the real reason for this ("plot purposes"), but who has such a detailed long-term plan that includes taking a class to acquire a specific recommendation from a notorious professor, but also takes said class with a heavy load? That combo usually has the goal of barely passing all the classes and then just moving on.

[MelloYellow]

The difference between DeRon (IRL) & Lionel is amazing. That kid is a future star.

[piccadilly83]

On 8/6/2019 at 5:48 PM, wales260 said:

I guess they never got around to really specify how Al was latino but NOT afro-latino such people would accuse him of "passing." It seems like the pivot to other under-represented minorities is for season 4+.

Sorry WALES260 I don't understand this comment. Could you explain some more? Are you saying Al is not Afro-Latino?

[wales260]

I was interpreting Al's conversation with Silvio as suggesting that he wasn't black, but no one in Black AF/Black Caucus asked, so he rolled with their assumption under his statement that he felt that black and brown were effectively the same.

It feels like not being Afro-Latino is the only reason to explain why he would be worried about the A-P finding out.

Edited August 30, 2019 by wales260
misstatement

[LuvMyShows]

Just finished the season, and for me it only picked up when the Moses Brown thing started rolling.  One of the things I had liked best about this show was that even though it could be infuriating watching some of the characters' expository monologues in past seasons, the show presented ideas/situations that really made me think.  But most of this season seemed to just be watching the ever-expanding cast of characters and their social lives and mini-struggles.  So the Moses Brown thing as a plot redeemed the season and returned the show to its core, just like the Moses Brown thing as an experience returned the characters to their core.

[LuvMyShows]

On 8/9/2019 at 8:10 AM, DearEvette said:

I am fascinated by what Simien is trying to say about respectability politics amongst black filmmakers and the black community consuming black film.  Sam rejecting the Tyler Perry-like director in favor of the more auteur like director (The Laverne Cox character, whom I believe is a gender flipped stand in for Spike Lee).  His throwing shade at Spike (even though he has long been an admirer of Spike) and he himself playing the Tyler Perry like character himself (with a nice wink because Perry often stars in his own movies).  I actually went looking to see if anyone talked about this and found a great article in Variety that breaks it down.  I made me rethink some things.  Won't make me like Tyler Perry's treatment of women, but I do respect the man's hustle.  And I loved and agree with Simien's comments about Spike.  The article is spoilery so don't read if you don't want to be spoiled.

Thanks for the article link.  I hadn't picked up on all of that from watching the show.

[BetterButter]

‘Dear White People’ Final (Musical) Season to Premiere in September on Netflix

[BetterButter]

 

[JH Lipton]

On 8/6/2021 at 12:43 PM, BetterButter said:

‘Dear White People’ Final (Musical) Season to Premiere in September on Netflix

Yay!

[Marley]

So far only watched the first episode and I hated it. Musicals annoy the shit out of me. Why did they have to go and ruin this show by making it into some dumb musical. Hopefully episode 2 is better.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Marley

[Meedis]

The first episode was a little rough but I am here for the musical theme.   And is that Wendie Malick (Nina Van Horn) making a cameo on the show?    That was an unexpected surprise.

Edited September 28, 2021 by Meedis

[Snapdragon]

I like actual musicals but when done in a tv show format?  Blech.  I'm two episodes in and it's like some form of torture.  The musical numbers are annoying, undercut all of the seriousness of the issues the show is trying to explore and aren't even well done.  I can't for the life of me figure out why they would do this (quarantine madness?) but it's a shame that this show is going out on such a sad and weird note.  

[Red Fields]

Crud, I was hoping the musical was only for the first episode.

[Marley]

I watched the whole thing cause I was bored and I hated it.

This show was so good the first couple seasons I don’t know why they fucked it up so bad in the last final season. 

How far were they supposed to be in the future? I don’t know why shows always make the future look so weird. I doubt it would change that much. They were all wearing such weird apocalypse-y clothes.

Reggie was always my fave so his parts were not bad.

Never like stupid eyeore Lionel.

Gabe was always bleh.

Seems weird a lot of the same ppl were still together in the future. 

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Marley

[Snapdragon]

Just finished season 4 today and that's got to be one of the worst final seasons to a show I've ever seen.  The first season (and the movie) were excellent, season 2 was good, season 3 was okay but this fourth season?  What happened?  So.  Many.  Issues.

1. The muscial aspect.  Why?  It made no sense and didn't fit with the rest of the show at all.  I felt bad for the actors in all of those scenes.  I can't imagine they were thrilled with this completely out of place element being added into the show.  

2. The future stuff.  Again, why?  The clothing was ridiculous (don't even get me started on those masks) and the fact that they all seemed to have fallen out of contact with one another (except all the couples were still together for some reason, save for Sam and Gabe, the only semi-functioning couple out of the entire group) made them having this cutesy "reunion" very strange.  And to discuss what exactly?  That they all planned the school variety show together one year?  And, oh yeah, Reggie shot a guy, which for some reason was less important to all of them than the stupid variety show.

3. Reggie shooting that guy.  Why would he need to go into hiding for 10-20 years (they were so vague about how far in the future they were.  The only "aging" they attempted was to give Sam some gray hairs, so I have no idea how old any of them were supposed to be) after that?  That would be a news story for a week tops, then people would move onto something else.  It's not even as if it was a controversal shooting.  The other guy was armed and had a manifesto.  Also, if you're going to spend the previous three seasons with the characters wanting the campus cops de-armed, then you probably shouldn't end your show with an event that would justify campus cops carrying guns.  Just saying.

4. Do the writers of this show hate Joelle?  Why have her end up with Reggie?  Reggie treated her like dog doo the entire series.  First he ignores her for Sam and then when they do get together, he blows her off constantly and blames her for everything.  They made a terrible couple and Joelle deserved much better.

5. I refuse to believe that someone as ambitious and driven as Coco would want to be on a trash reality show such as Big Brother.  Makes no sense.  Coco was on a mission of excellence and appearing on Big Brother, even as the first black female winner (because that's a first everyone cares about), would be very much beneath her.  Also, I'm not buying that Muffy would betray Coco for some stupid reality show prize what with them being best friends and Coco helping Muffy through her sexual assault the year before. 

6. They never explained what the deal was with Al's heritage.  Was he Afro-Latino?  Half Hispanic, half black?  And why didn't he mention this earlier to people?  Who knows?  Certainly not the writers and definitely not the audience.  

7. Half of the reoccuring characters were missing.  Now, that might have been due to Covid or them being unavailable due to the gap between seasons 3 & 4 but there was no Kurt, Kelsey, D'unte, Ruskins/Narrator, Silvio or Rashid.  I know the actor that played Rashid left the show over a pay dispute but what happened to the rest of them?  The show just felt off and weird without them.

So yeah, just really, really disappointed that this is how the show went out.  

[memememe76]

Joelle is my favourite character the first two seasons but then they lost the plot when she united with Reggie. He treated her like crap, I was shocked they stayed together after all that. 
The show’s main problem for me was the overemphasis of Lionel and Gabe, people who got more credit for their contributions than they deserved. 
 

The show’s strength was the power trio of Sam, Coco and Joelle. It was weird to see Sam with Lionel so much.  Coco was secluded and Joelle was being mistreated by Reggie. 

[Joimiaroxeu]

Just finished the final season. Since I didn't have the mental fortitude to binge it, I recorded my takes for each episode as I watched them (over the course of a month or so), as follows:
E1
Curious to know how they chose the songs. The transitions usually seemed rather random to me. I liked the musical interludes but they mostly took me out of the moment.

E2
OMG, some of the people singing could barely stay in tune. Was that the point, that people should find their lane and stay in it? I'm one episode away from declaring this season an ambitious fail.

E3
The LL Cool J imitation was hilarious. But the song wasn't his, was it?

Black David in Big House. Wasn't he on How to Get Away with Murder? (And The Bold and the Beautiful?) He really changes up his look because I didn't recognize him at first.

How did this show satirize the last season of Big Brother already? They must have been writing that stuff while BB was running a few months ago because the references were fairly new.

E4
I'm impressed with the way they're satirizing Big Brother. The writers have seriously studied BB, especially the just-past season. (And I guess they threw in a bit of Squid Game too?)

And there's the worst cover of Bye Bye Bye I've ever heard. My ears are still bleeding.

E5
Director Miss Bernadette went down in flames. A White woman playing a Black character? An August Wilson character? Utterly clueless.

E6
Being multiracial comes with a lot of t-shirts. Hah.

OMG, they did not need to do Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes) so wrong.

E7
The lip syncing was exceptionally not great in this episode.

E8
Okay, the cover of This is How We Do It was fantastic for a song which IMO is pointless to cover because the original was perfect.

E9
Alright, the dance sequence was fire. It went very Little Nas X during the Hate Me Now cover, which was clever since the original song was by Nas.

I think Iesha was clout-chasing at Sam's expense. IMO it wasn't about "the issues" at all. She just wanted to position herself as the new & improved Sam.

E10
Respectability politics rears its ugly head again.

Seems like they saved the best songs for last.

Well, I didn't entirely hate this season. Going musical was a brave choice since few of the actors could actually sing. At least they used songs most viewers would likely be familiar with, though some of the covers were nearly unrecognizable until the singers hit the bridge.

[Meedis]

On 11/7/2021 at 10:23 AM, memememe76 said:

The show’s strength was the power trio of Sam, Coco and Joelle. It was weird to see Sam with Lionel so much.  Coco was secluded and Joelle was being mistreated by Reggie. 

I totally agree that my favorite scenes were with the three main ladies together.   Season 2 seemed to have more of them interacting.   I wish Coco wasn't isolated so much this last season.

[LuvMyShows]

Somehow I hadn't known that another season of Dear White People had aired, so I just finished it today.  I don't know if anybody is even going to see these comments so late, but I'm going to do them anyway!

I thought it was decent.  The musical numbers didn't really bother me after awhile.  I did like the surprise ending of the variety show, and how it was a surprise to us as viewers also, as well as how the variety show managed to still go on and combine it with the protest about the more troublesome aspects.

One thing that bugged me, was that no matter how bad Sam had wanted that job at the career fair, no way would she have ever put up with that interviewer being so engrossed in his phone.  And I also thought it was unclear how Michael went from only writing crap for the show and being fired, to then being back in the show and writing a really good musical number.

But a nice touch from the future that I really liked, was that we thought we were watching an on-line conversation between Sam and Gabe, but it turned out to be a "convo simulation with bae" that Sam had engineered to have Gabe say all the things she wanted him to say about his movie.

ETA: One more thing to add...I noticed at the graduation at the end, that many people were wearing sweaters and long-sleeves on a sunny day.  But this was supposed to be a regular graduation in May or June.  I'm guessing that the time of year it was filmed was more like November, and that's why they had to dress that way.

On 10/2/2021 at 10:59 PM, Snapdragon said:

And, oh yeah, Reggie shot a guy, which for some reason was less important to all of them than the stupid variety show.

With all the fuss they made about the legacy that would be established at Winchester after doing the show, they never gave us any info in the future about the effect of the show on Winchester...they only gave us the effect on the specific students that the series has featured.

On 10/2/2021 at 10:59 PM, Snapdragon said:

The only "aging" they attempted was to give Sam some gray hairs, so I have no idea how old any of them were supposed to be) after that?  

That was bad enough, but the absolute worst was how old these actors had gotten and yet still supposed to be believable playing college seniors!

On 10/2/2021 at 10:59 PM, Snapdragon said:

I refuse to believe that someone as ambitious and driven as Coco would want to be on a trash reality show such as Big Brother.  Makes no sense.  Coco was on a mission of excellence and appearing on Big Brother, even as the first black female winner (because that's a first everyone cares about), would be very much beneath her. 

My concern/confusion with this, was from the future.  Given that the writing for Coco was that she really wanted to be the first black female winner of Big House, it made no sense to me how in the future, she was regretful of having done the show at all and how it's the last time she'd do what white people wanted her to do.  It seemed to me that she wasn't just talking about what she did on the Big House show as being what white people wanted her to do, but that having done the show at all was what white people wanted her to do.    

On 10/2/2021 at 10:59 PM, Snapdragon said:

Also, I'm not buying that Muffy would betray Coco for some stupid reality show prize what with them being best friends and Coco helping Muffy through her sexual assault the year before. 

I was disappointed that we didn't get to see anything about what became of Muffy in the future.

On 11/25/2021 at 2:02 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

Curious to know how they chose the songs. 

Justin Simien said that the song selection was driven by what they could get the rights to and could afford in their budget.

On 11/25/2021 at 2:02 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

Black David in Big House. Wasn't he on How to Get Away with Murder? (And The Bold and the Beautiful?) He really changes up his look because I didn't recognize him at first.

I have never seen him before, but in the scene where we first see him on Big House, he looked fiiiine.

On 11/25/2021 at 2:02 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

OMG, they did not need to do Breakin' My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes) so wrong.

The song I think they did wrong was Shackles, by Mary Mary.  It is such a joyful song, and they made it into something sad and somber.

On 11/25/2021 at 2:02 PM, Joimiaroxeu said:

Going musical was a brave choice since few of the actors could actually sing. 

Interestingly, in the case of Reggie, who I didn't think sounded great on his own, I thought he and Iesha sounded fantastic together in their duet at the shooting range. And as a side observation, maybe Reggie, or should I say Marque, was technically proficient at tap dancing, but he just didn't have natural grace.

Edited July 26, 2022 by LuvMyShows