'The Last OG' Season 3 Episode 2: Tray is racially profiled, Shannon struggles to accept Shahzad's girlfriend
Spoilers for ‘The Last O.G.’ Season 3 Episode 2.
‘Started From The Bottom’, the second episode of this season of ‘The Last O.G.’, may remind you of the iconic Drake song because of its name, but it is so much more than that. The ever-present theme of the show, covered in thick layers of Tracy Morgan’s slapstick humor and Tiffany Haddish’s sass, is racism. This time, it was racial profiling, but two separate aspects of it.
Tray (Morgan) is racially profiled by a woman who lives in the same building as him. Tray was called to the woman’s apartment to fix a sink because he’s the handyman. The woman, who thinks he’s trying to break in, pepper sprays him. Well, it wasn’t pepper spray, she claimed it was a new scent from Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand Goop. Anyway, once the misunderstanding is cleared out, she thinks Tray stole her phone.
This is the kind of racial profiling witnessed on a daily basis. Remember when a black New York City man was denied access to a building where his aunt lived by a white woman who called the police claiming he was a thief? Or the YouTube employee who called the police on a black man waiting for a friend inside the doorway of an apartment building in San Francisco? While the incidents being referred to here are specific ones, these can very well be a hundred different incidents where the events played out in the exact same manner.
On the other side, Shannon (Haddish) was faced with a different conundrum. She was very excited about the fact that her son Shahzad (Dante Hoagland) was interested in a girl. In fact, she was so excited, she asked Shahzad to invite her home so that they could meet. Her excitement turned into horror when she realized that the girl was white.
The irony of the situation was pointed out by her husband Josh (Ryan Gaul), who said it was odd for her to react this way considering she had married a white person. In any case, it took her a bit to understand and even get used to the idea. And that only happened because Shahzad told her that his crush reminded him of his mother.
While Tray’s profiling was arguably the more harmful one, considering it often leads to police brutality, sometimes even fatalities, Shannon’s one was slightly hypocritical because she did not think the girl could have the same values as her, couldn’t be as good as her expectations, just because of her race. Both aren’t the same at all, but the show’s writers smartly juxtapose two different kinds of racial biases against each other, while not at all equating one to the other.
Tray, for the most part of it, was ignorant of this profiling -- except when he got sprayed on the face. But the ones who did profile him had to experience some shame and endure the good-natured Tray’s housewarming party. ‘The Last O.G.’ doesn’t try to be preachy about messages and morals. But it always leaves viewers with something to think about in every episode.
‘The Last O.G.’ airs every Wednesday only on TBS.