Black-ish Season 5 Christmas episode recap

In the Black-ish Christmas episode, Dre and his family explore the complexities of making sure to support black movies.

Choosing to skip right past the gift buying and opening portions of Christmas, Black-ish jumps straight into the family trying to decide what movie to see. Most of the family wants to go see the new superhero movie, Commander Justice. Dre, however, has to make things complicated and suggests that they go see Back of the Bus: The Rosa Parks story. He’s voted down and the family heads out to see Commander Justice in action.

At the movie theater, Junior runs into his old girlfriend Megan (Annelise Grace) who thinks he’s working there (his outfit matches the uniform.) She awkwardly brings up him dropping out of college and Junior can’t really explain what’s going on with him. Meanwhile, Bow runs into Charlie who initially tries to hit on her but quickly transitions to trying to join the family for their movie. Bow caves easily.

Dre and Pops have wandered off to get the tickets and Dre notices that all of the Commander Justice showings are almost sold out, but the Rosa Parks movie has plenty of tickets available. He runs into a few black couples at the ticket kiosk and realizes none of them are going to see the Rosa Parks movie and is disappointed. He guilts Pops into letting him get the Rosa Parks tickets.

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What is a black movie?

The family is shocked and appalled when he shows up with the Rosa Parks tickets but Bow agrees to go in so they all do. “If we want to have black movies, we have to show up.”

There’s a brief exchange during this discussion where the kids quiz Dre on what qualifies as a black movie. He points out black movies with white directors (some count, some don’t) The Rock and Will Smith (he’s secured the white dollar) movies don’t count. It’s just the first of a few moments that are hilarious but very real when addressing this topic.

Is it worth it?

Once inside, Jack and Diane immediately create a plot to escape. When asking to go get popcorn fails (Ruby brought Thanksgiving leftovers), they decide to ask to go to the restroom. Dre sends Junior to watch them.

As Jack and Diane sneak into Commander Justice they bump into the poster and Junior has to stop and fix it. Of course, Megan pops up again as he’s fixing the sign, further cementing her thought that he works there. At this point, he rambles about his internship at his dad’s office but when that doesn’t seem to have impressed her he lies and says he’s planning a trip to Australia.

Back inside the movie, Charlie pulls out his tripod to record the movie (he sells them outside the church). When Junior returns defeated, Dre ends up going and pulling Jack and Diane out of Commander Justice. Bow ends up snitching on Charlie.

As the movie continues to play, the family starts to notice little things. Dre has an answer each time. First, there are an awful lot of white people in important roles (Dre: “They were trying to secure a bigger audience.”) There are a lot of shots of the bus (Dre: “The bus is a character, it represents progress.”)

The dialogue seems kind of slave-y. (Dre: “You weren’t there.”) Are they trying to imply that Rosa’s white boss gave her the idea? (Dre: “You weren’t there!”)

Again, all of these issues are things that have come up over the years with some black historical movies. Just this past week The Green Book came under fire for a lot of the reasons mentioned above.

Eventually, the whole family turns against Dre and everyone leaves him but Ruby. Bow leaves after saying: “Tyler Perry wouldn’t even present this mess.” Dre concedes later on that if the movie is bad, the message is going to get lost anyway.

A new deal

After noticing Junior’s struggles at the theater, Bow tells him that he needs to actually figure out what he wants to do if that was the reason he took a gap year.

That night Dre is struggling to sleep but in the morning he has an idea. He wakes up the family and tells them that their new Christmas tradition is watching a classic black movie the morning after. This year they land on The Hurricane. 

What did you think of the fall finale? Are you excited to see what Black-ish offers in the New Year? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Black-ish will now be going on a Christmas break and will be back on Jan. 8 at 9/8 Central.