'Blackish' Season 7 Episode 2 Review: Pandemic stress gets to Dre and Junior falls in love for the first time
While we go into the second week of the seventh season of 'Blackish', the ABC sitcom is continuing to depict how all our lives have changed in the aftermath of the pandemic. The episode begins with a pre-pandemic scene first to do a play on all of us thinking that the coronavirus would not be a big deal and that it was only on cruise ships. We have reached that point in time that something from seven months ago feels completely foreign.
However, the main focus of this week's episode is homeschooling. Andre "Dre" Johnson Sr (Anthony Anderson) is in charge of his twins' education at home while his wife, Dr Rainbow "Bow" Johnson (Tracee Ellis Ross), is out saving lives. So now, with Dre in charge of both Jack (Miles Brown) and Diane (Marsai Martin), he is ready to go all in. He plans to supplement the kids' distance learning with additional "hyper-intensive 20-minute blocks" of "circuit learning".
At first, it seems to be going well. Dre has a big board with the schedule all mapped out. The kids seem to be sticking to it and doing everything according to the plan. Dre even gloats about balancing everything and even excelling during a work conference call. However, it does not last long. A week later, the twins' teacher calls Dre to let him know that they have not been turning in their work over the past week.
Dre and Bow are both understandably upset and when they speak to their children, they realize the twins are going through something unprecedented. Diane is worried about having to be homeschooled for the rest of her life and Jack misses his friends. Dre does figure out how to be more hands-on with his twins and we then see him effortlessly answering his kids' doubts while also working.
However, the stress gets to be too much for Dre and we soon see him having a meltdown because the wrong box of chocolate sandwich cookies got delivered. He then storms away but comes back later to have a nice conversation with Bow where he opens up about not knowing what to do about the stress. Bow tells him that it is normal to be stressed, especially because we do not have our normal coping mechanisms in the first pandemic most of us are experiencing.
Meanwhile, Dre and Bow's son, Andre "Junior" Johnson Jr (Marcus Scribner), is going steady with his girlfriend, Olivia (Katlyn Nichol), with whom he continues to video call as they stay apart. When speaking to his mother, Junior realizes that if things were normal, she would have come over for dinner, so Junior decides to start arranging Zoom hangouts between his family and Olivia.
One night, when Bow wants to just relax after work and declines the Zoom cheese tasting hangout, Junior gets upset that his mother does not approve of his relationship. When they talk about it, Bow realizes that her son is in love for the first time and is excited. She promises to get closer to Olivia and text her. When the episode ends, we see the two women video chatting secretly about Junior's "quirks".
As always, 'Blackish' continues to be immensely relatable. How many of us would have had the same meltdown that Dre did? For many of us, this endless cycle of working from home and managing everything else that comes with life these days have taken a toll on our mental health. Realizing that this is new and it is okay to feel the way we do is perhaps the first step in dealing with that trauma and 'Blackish' brings that out perfectly.
On another note, we are so excited for Junior and Olivia and we hope we see her soon enough in the same room as the Johnson family, instead of as just a face on the screen. while most of the focus is on Dre, we hope there are more Junior-centric stories coming from the season in future episodes. It would be exciting to see how Junior would be navigating this post-pandemic world and how he decides to move on with his future.
'Black-ish' airs on ABC on Wednesday nights at 9.30 pm EST.