Based on the acclaimed film of the same name, this Netflix-original series follows a group of students of color at Winchester University, a predominantly white Ivy League college. The students are faced with a landscape of cultural bias, social injustice, misguided activism and slippery politics. Through an absurdist lens, the series uses irony, self-deprecation, brutal honesty and humor to highlight issues that still plague today's"post-racial" society.
With two seasons of this Netflix show, we are left with a feeling of uncertainty, due in no small part to the performances or achievements of the second season. Whereas there first season was a beauty, the second season is however something of an in-between, it was not too bad, and it was not too good; it had some exceptional episodes and had even more exceptionally poor episodes. This may lead to some saying that the 2nd season is an absolute disaster, expecially when compared to its more illustrious and captivating first season.
We admit that the 3rd person narrative technique suits this series to the very letter, and we applaud Netflix and Justin Simien for adopting this. The first season is testament to this.
Dear White People is of the category that does away with a solid plot or storyline, but rather chooses to adapt each episode of the show towards achieving a particular objective, while keeping in mind the overall general theme of the show. That being said, you may notice that Dear White People is a Dark Satirical comedy, however the theme of each episode or the mood so to say is dictated by the message being passed in the episode. Thus the message may require that it be narrated comically or that we employ a little bit of dark humour intertwined with Satirical undertones. This form of story telling technique is just brilliant and amazingly successful, it keeps the series flexible and less rigid and in so doing keeps the audience guessing and interested.
That is not to say that adopting this technique does not have its folly. It could make some episodes so drab and uninteresting that you may want to skip that episode. Perhaps that could be the reaso
Further to the forgoing, it is safe to say that Dear White People (DWP) is more of a show designed to address societal issues( especially those laced with racism) than an out and out comedy. It has no recognisable story line, but it does however stick to a well defined plot theme element. Throughout the first season we see as the characters adapt to Winchester High, the black populace and how they relate to racially motivated issues, their safe haven of Armstrong Parker House and the on air personality of Samantha( on her radio program; Dear White People) as against her personal life as it relates to whites and the coloured.
Season one's delivery of content was masterfully crafted, starting off with the voices of reason being those of Samantha, Joelle and Reggie. We felt that they were the voice of reason until we met Troy and Coco. They seemed to be more reasonable and more conservative than the former. Furthermore, we got introduced to the personal life of Samantha, her family background and her love life, and suddenly we were questioning the propriety or otherwise of having her lead the Dear White People charade.
the concluding episodes of the first season were an absolute roller coaster, the situation with Reggie and the police, the reaction of the school to the situation, how Samantha and the rest of her Armstrong Parker House took it in stride, the authority's response to it and the resultant effect, and all culminating into the explosion of pent up emotion by Troy Fairbanks. We had no reprieve from fast paced rivetting story telling. We totally had a fields day with that one.
We may perhaps be right to say that the first episodes of the second season did at least try to achieve something, at the very least it did expose the folly of Samantha, as it seemed as though she was a little bit more interested in being relevant and always right, rather than being the champion of her cause. One move we did like was the carryover effect from the first season's disaster as residents of Davis House have been inculcated into the Armstrong Parker House after the burning down of DH. This spelt yet more disaster, but at least it meant that we'd have more whites Vs black confrontations, yea? Buzz kill, we didn't!
The season sought to explore the impacts of the alt white on the American society, but ended up deviating too far somewhere we know nothing about. We may want to admit that the second season kept up with the appearances of the first season, it sought to do more, but ended up doing less. We think they sought to run a different theme concurrently with the main theme of the series and this became a disaster ,as it nearly became the major theme without it being intended to be.
We further felt that the attention to details in the second season were wrongly placed. The second season appeared to focus a little too much on the sexuality of Lionel, which is a very wrong move. Lionel would have been a totally irrelevant character if he wasn't running alongside the main theme with his investigative journalism. The attention paid to his sexuality and the episodes detailing that were not only irrelevant but borderline boring.
I will not bore our readers with more details on the failings of the second season any further, we will simply address the acting and on-screen performance of the characters. Upon starting this show for the first time, it would appear to you as though these actors were born for their individual roles. Their acting is spot on and if I may say, exquisite.
Brandon P. Bell, Logan Browning, Antoinette Robertson and DeRon Horton are just brilliant actors. They seem to slide into character as though they were eating ice cream, even though DeRon may appear to annoy us a little with his overzealousness. He is nonetheless a very very good actor no doubt.
Antoinette on her own part seem to have too much of a mastery of her role, we only hope she does not become too good at it as to play only the role of a bitchy black Girl.
Having gone through the trouble of reviewing the first two seasons of the show, we have landed right back where we started. We are hard pressed to call this a solid show based on the fact that the two seasons have very different performance ratios. Nevertheless, it's a show we WILL recommend to our readers for being morally challenging, it's depiction of contemporary issues and absolutely great acting.
Anyone who has a standing desire to engage in a tv show that challenges you to think about and discuss ethno-cultural and political issues should have no reasons not to pick this up. In two seasons, you can rest assured you just won't be disappointed, but I won't however guarantee that you will find satisfaction in each and every episode you watch.
I must also mention that as a final bit of last hurrah, the creators decided to throw in two huge stars as the season was winding down. Might this be in a bid to get more viewers return or could it be the start of something huge? We definitely hope is the latter!!
Creator Justin Simien serves as an executive producer.
Made for TV by Netflix
We will rate it's first season a solid FCA AppR : 8/10
While it's second season will have to make do with an FCA AppR of 7/10.
Combined, maybe a rating of 7.5/10 more or less.
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