Boob Tube Reviews | 1
Show Notes:
Welcome to the Boob Tube Reviews Segment! In this episode, we cover:
Blindspotting Season 2
1000% Me: Growing Up Mixed
With Love Season 2
Spiderman Across the Spiderverse
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Transcript:
Julia: Hey friends, this is pop culture makes me jealous where we analyze pop culture through the lens of race or gender, and sometimes both. I'm your host Julia Washington, and today I'm giving you a quick recap of everything I watched over the weekend.
Julia: Before we get started, I wanted to let you know a few things for the month of June. Our book club, the Jelly Pops Book Club is reading the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. You can read along with us or you can join us on Patreon to get access to our live book Club meetups. We also have a new show coming out soon, the Jelly Pops Book Club podcast.
Julia: We get into books and their screen adaptations. So go and subscribe wherever you get your podcast so you get all the fun bookish content. If that's not for you or your thing, that's totally fine. Uh, tell your friends who might be into that bookish content all about it. Okay, here we go to the show. The first show I wanted to, uh, tell you about is blind Spotting Season two wrapped recently, and so.
Julia: I just, I wanted to share all this with you, so blind spotting season two aired April 14th, 2023. If you're unfamiliar with the show, the origins are born from the film of the same name released in 2028. It is from the Creative Minds of Davi Digs and Raphael Kasal. The universe that they created is set in real life, Oakland, California.
Julia: Blind spotting. This series follows Ashley, played by Jasmine Sifi Jones, and Miles played by Raphael Kasal as they navigate miles' incarceration. So in season one, it opens with miles being arrested on year's Eve, Ashley's entire world comes crashing down because now she's facing what this means for her and their young son, Sean.
Julia: She moves in with Miles family and the adjustment period is real, y'all. She has this contentious relationship with Miles's sister Trish, and at the same time, Miles's mother, rainy is trying her best to make Ashley and Sean feel like it's their home too. So, season One brought this poetic beauty to the screen using spoken word, song, rap, dance, and the fundamentals of theater to bring us into this uniqueness that is Oakland, California.
Julia: In season two, the imagination Out Doess itself. Once again in this season, Ashley struggles to hold it together. In the premiere, Ashley is desperately trying to make sure Sean's birthday is perfect because it is his first birthday without his dad being present. As the season moves on, the pressure increases the tender beauty from season one returns in season two, and in my opinion is more powerful this time around.
Julia: What blind spotting captures well is the trauma incarceration can cause it's dehumanization of those in prison and how it affects family dynamics. Miles'. Mother Rainy played by Helen Hunt misses her son. She misses seeing him with his family when Rainy suggests she join Ashley and Sean on one of the family weekends, San Quentin offers to married couples.
Julia: Ashley is upset. Taken aback by this suggestion. These visits only come every few months, sometimes three months, sometimes six months, and only last 48 hours. This moment between Sifu Jones and Hunt has a familiar tone that daughters-in-law and partners. Everywhere will relate to the unspoken wedge between the mother and the partner that our culture is obsessed with.
Julia: But with what this show does well is reminds us that while Ashley's working through her existential crisis, she isn't the only one experiencing the life altering changes of miles being in prison. The series is overall brilliant and unlike anything on television. It's heartwarming, dramatic, and funny as hell.
Julia: It's never been a contender in any awards, competitions, and this, to me is a shame because the acting is brilliant. The cinematography is beautiful, the writing feels unmatched. Another thing I love about this show is the conversation about having a white mom, rainy, and her non-white daughter, Trish Miles', sister.
Julia: Trish is mixed, so rainy lives in a world where she surrounds herself with non-white people, but also has to reckon with her own white privilege in existence she's aware of and is more progressive than a lot of white moms on television, and she's doing the work to be better. I love this because. It's like the show is saying, Hey, y'all can be whatever age you are and still do the work to be better, to be a better person when it comes to race, miles is white.
Julia: Trish is mixed. Ashley is mixed black. The actress Jasmine Sifu Jones herself is the daughter of Ron Sifu Jones, who is probably best known for William. And this is us and jazz singer. Kim Leslie, because of these actors having real life experience with being mixed race, it adds to the vulnerability, the anger, just the overall acting in general.
Julia: In episode three, miles and Ashley have the very real conversation about the use of the N word as Sean begins using it. Sean's world is comprised of a multicultural, multiracial existence, and the nuance in the horrors of racism to the degree that is the origins of the N word, are unknown to his seven year old mind.
Julia: So when he asks why he can't say it, miles, his white father and Ashley, his mixed black mother, have to tell him. And through music and pantomime seven year old Sean is introduced to the history of being black in America. As I watched this episode, I couldn't help but think of the time I was in a show called Freedom Writers that explained the Civil Rights movement through a series of vignettes.
Julia: We hosted hundreds of school-aged children for the show and months after sh. Closing of the show, a mother recognized me and gave me all the perfunctory compliments. One does when they lacked up themselves and before she walked away, she said, you know, I just think the kids were too young for it. The youngest age group that we performed the show for was fifth grade.
Julia: Sean in blind spotting is seven. Reminders of the duality in which I exist will always be waiting for me, and with shows like Blind Spotting addressing this duality, I'm here for it. Also the cameos. I'm not from Oakland. I live 90 minutes away. Mm. An hour if you're lucky. Um, but hell, those cameos were so good and I knew exactly who everybody was before they even had to say their names.
Julia: Love it. It's a nice little nod, um, to the area and to the, to the culture. All episodes of this poignant story are available on Stars. I recommend watching the film first, then watching Seasons one and two. The film is from Miles and his best friend Collin's perspective, and the show is from the perspective of Ashley, another beautiful way of reminding audiences that the world is multi-dimensional.
Julia: I've also included an interview in the show notes with Raphael Kasal about blind spotting the movie. I thought it was a really good conversation. Okay. The next thing, a thousand percent me growing up mixed, y'all. I was so excited because we all know I am looking for other mixed people and I'm trying to find a community in that because being mixed in America, as I have mentioned so many times is a mind mess.
Julia: So this one hour long documentary interviews mixed children and their parents primarily focusing on Bay Area families. While this is a good entry point to discuss race with children, it does not dive deeper into the nuance of being mixed in America. It is a very sweet, bordering on wholesome type of a dock.
Julia: Many of the interviewed children passionately describe their mixed heritage and why it's important to them. They are honest about the confusion they experience when people don't quote, get them. Many of the white or non-black parents acknowledge a lack of understanding when it comes to raising black children.
Julia: This documentary is from the Mind of W Kamal Bell, and later in the documentary he interviews an 80 year old mixed race black man to discuss what his experience was like growing up. What is missing is the everything in between. While I assume many of the parents in the stock are 40 plus, their experiences of their children are so different from those of us mixed who came before them.
Julia: One could even argue that the Bay Area experience of being mixed is a unique bubble that by traveling 90 miles east to Sacramento would really render a completely different documentary. You could even go 90 miles south of Sacramento and you might get a similar experience, but still very different.
Julia: Having spent my entire life in California, 90 minutes from the East Bay. I can't begin to imagine what being mixed is like in the south or Midwest, but in my travels to visit family in those regions, people tend to breathe a sigh of relief when they learn I'm from California, thus explaining my skin tone to them despite it being December.
Julia: And despite the fact that I'm mixed block it's, it's to the point now where I just find it to be being hilarious. There's so much to unpack here, and while I'm still navigating this world myself, reckoning with my light girl privilege, at least now this documentary serves as a conversation starter.
Julia: That's easy. I. To digest for people whose world is lacking in color. I do think I would like to see something deeper about the mixed experience, something that explores multiple generations in various regions of the country. Maybe something that doesn't shy away from the conversation of colorism, how even in families, each child's experience can be completely different.
Julia: I know I've mentioned this multiple times on the show. My siblings and I look absolutely nothing alike. If you don't look for it and we get lighter, With each child, my brother being the darkest, me being the lightest, I'm convinced if my parents had a fourth child, it would be so white. No one would ever believe that child had a black father.
Julia: Regardless if you're unsure of how to introduce the conversation of race to your children, like mentioned multiple times already, start with this documentary, but if you are mixed like me and looking for some kind of solve or comradery, this might not be it. A thousand percent me growing up mixed is streaming on max r i p h b o max.
Julia: Okay? You guys.
Julia: Here we go. Diving into this Torrid history of the Army Hammer's family going as far back as his great-grandfather, Armand Hammer with interviews from survivors of the Hammer men, as well as Casey Hammer, army Hammer's Aunt. This three-part series streaming on Max as a result of the H B O Max reconfiguration, it originally premiered on dis Discovery Plus is a complete and utter.
Julia: Horror with shocking evidence, which includes direct messages and witness recounts. When I tell you episode one will leave you feeling gross, it is not an exaggeration. And if you're new around here, then you aren't aware that I refuse to watch horror movies in scary television. I live in a curated bubble of romcoms and light drama to combat the horrors of the real world when I step outside my door.
Julia: And this was a reminder that there is truly a. Horror in a form that we don't want to comprehend that exists in this world. House of Hammer is a reminder that the system is designed for wealthy men of a certain pedigree, and given the recent news, it's disappointing to be reminded that even in our modern era, women are still disposable and money reigns supreme ruler.
Julia: When I finished the series, I immediately turned on Gilmore Girls to restore the Romcom light drama bubble. All episodes of House of Hammer are available on max R I p Discovery plus season two of With Love Dropped on June 2nd, 2023, and it's only six episodes. In this season, we find the Diaz's family members happy and in love, but Lily and Santiago's relationship takes a rough turn when he is firm in the fact that he does not want to get married.
Julia: And when Jorge Jr and Henry become engaged, Lily is forced to make a major decision. So I'm trying not to give anything away since the series literally just dropped, like. At the time of this recording four days ago, as Lily stumbles through this phase in life as a 30 something tired of the stagnation of her own life, she realizes that her brother's best friend Nick, is more than just the friend with benefits he was in in season one.
Julia: So, and, and let us not forget Miles and Soul's relationship. When it, this partnership relationship foundation is challenged when Miles denies being queer. Soul begins to doubt the strength of the relationship. They are a black trans woman uninterested in being a part of someone's phase. And this show addresses that head on with all of the things that black trans women go through.
Julia: And I. Am here for it because it comes from a place of education and while it is rooted in trauma, it's still, I thought, tastefully handled in a way that makes it real and human, which is what we wanna see. We want our see our queer community friends on television in the fully fleshed out humans they are.
Julia: The theme of family is strong in this series between born into family and Found family and showing conflict, albeit on the lighter side of things. You still see characters work through problems and experience growth. You could argue the acting is a little stiff on the show and lock stops. And while the series has a hallmark cheese all over it, what it does in terms of representation, I think is strong.
Julia: It's a sweet series that will be an easy watch on a Friday or Saturday night. All seasons of with love are streaming on Prime video. Okay, now onto the literal best thing I watched last week. Spider-man across the spider verse. I, I don't know what I can say about this film that hasn't already been said, and without giving any spoilers, because I do not want to spoil this for you, and y'all know, we do not host a spoil free show, but it's worth it to not spoil it for you because you need to see this movie.
Julia: And as our Paul Mario said on his review on Instagram, follow him at movies with Mr. Mario on Instagram, he says, quote, miles Morales continues to be one of the greatest characters in Spider-Man lore. End quote, hard agree a hundred percent. I cannot argue with that. At the same time though, this next installment of Miles Morales's journey, at first had me feeling like, why is this set up so long?
Julia: Why is this movie over two hours? But as you go along the journey, it all comes into focus and makes sense. I think another reason why I love Miles Morales's Spider-Man is that he's a mixed kid with a black dad who's in law enforcement. You know, that's something I relate to heavily. If you've been around for a while.
Julia: And once again, the art is stunning with six different distinct animation styles. The marriage of all of these is seamless and natural making you feel like you are in the Spider Verse with Miles. While I tend to complain that there's usually too much going on in movies these days across the spider versus no exception, but here it works because Miles isn't a character existing in his own universe.
Julia: He is a character existing in multiple universes. This multi-layered story is necessary to highlight the exact reason why we are all here. The multiverses in peril. Spider-Man across the Spider Verse is playing exclusively in theaters, so get your butts to the movie theater asap because watching this one on the big screen is an absolute must because visually the soundtrack is just as good as the last one.
Julia: Go get there. Go, go, go. So that's what I watched last weekend. I enjoyed pretty much all of it. The one thing that I started that I didn't finish is Babylon. I got 20 minutes into Babylon. Saw that it was a three hour movie and thought there's no reason for this to be a three hour movie. We're 20 minutes in and all I can remember is that an elephant took a shit.
Julia: So I don't recommend that movie personally. It wasn't visually compelling enough to keep me engaged for whatever the fuck is supposed to happen in that film. With all of that said, if you have watched any of these pop culture properties, shoot me a dm. So we can talk about them. You can find the show on Instagram at pop culture.
Julia: Makes me jealous. Or you can follow me, the Julia Washington.
Julia: Pop culture makes me jealous, is written, edited, and produced by me, your host. This is an independent podcast, so your support through rating and reviewing on your podcast player or joining our Patreon helps keep the show alive. If you loved this episode or any of our episodes for that matter, share it with someone else who might love it too.
Julia: In the meantime, thanks for tuning in y'all.
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