Mixed-ish is a spinoff/prequel to Black-ish and focuses on Rainbow Johnson’s childhood in the eighties as she adjusts from life in a commune to the harsh real world. Controversial opinion: it may be my favorite Kenya Barris sitcom if I am comparing it to Black-ish and Grown-ish. I was a child of the eighties so setting it in that era got the series an unfair advantage that the others cannot have because those series are as contemporaneous as viewers unfolding lives.
Mixed-ish’s cast makes me happy. I am so glad that Tika Sumpter is finally getting a steady paycheck. To be fair, there is no world in which Sumpter could be mistaken for a younger Anna Deavere Smith, who plays Bow’s mom on Black-ish. Sumpter and Smith’s takes on the character of Bow’s mom is completely different, but I will happily sign a waiver because Sumpter should have owned the world by now for being such a talented, gorgeous actor, but life is unfair so it is nice to see her finally rewarded. I have always loved Gary Cole and am not at all surprised that he is so deft at comedy. Hellooooooo!!! The man was in Office Space and Veep. He is a legendary, reliable magnificent bastard whom I have loved since American Gothic.
For once, I am going to applaud a creative project for making the more marketable, commercially successful choice. Originally Anders Holm was going to play Bow’s dad. I am sure that Holm is wonderful, but I am unfamiliar with his work and did not even know that Mixed-ish existed when he was in it. I have too many television series and movies to watch so I stopped periodically checking out what networks were offering as new television shows each season. I also do not watch live television, but my mother does so when I saw Mark-Paul Gosselaar with black people, I wondered if The Passage got renewed (it did not), began to do some research and would love to have someone educate me as to if and when Gosselaar has always been cool with black people or if it is a new thing and the real story because being in two television series with prominent black characters cannot be an accident. I mentally have fan fiction that explains it: Brad Wolgast, the FBI agent, is related to Bow and/or is also mixed, which is why he was not down with experimenting on that little black girl. Listen, Johan, Bow’s little brother, always wanted to be a cop so maybe Brad is really Johan in a parallel universe—no offense intended to Daveed Diggs, who is great as Bow’s adult brother in Black-ish. If Parks & Recreation can exist in the same universe as Scandal, so can Kenya Barris’ sitcoms with a single season Fox vampire series. Um, also he looks more like a young Beau Bridges, who played Bow’s dad in Black-ish.
Tracee Ellis Ross’ role as creator and narrator in Mixed-ish gives the show an advantage over Black-ish and Grown-ish because even as a child, Bow is more mature than Dre, her husband, a manchild, and Zoe, her oldest child and daughter. The only lapse in judgment that she has shown in this season is playing Bow when she graduated from medical school and Sumpter was still playing her mother. Ross is a beautiful woman, but she knows that she is older than Sumpter and had no business being in the same room trying to pretend otherwise. At least use some of that Disney Marvel CGI money to use Smith for that scene. I do love the opening credits and seeing Ross’ real mom, Diana. Nice shout out!
Overall Mixed-ish worked for me because I got to laugh. The adult cast is perfect. I came in loving them, and they did not disappoint. I am not familiar with Christina Anthony, who plays Denise, Bow’s maternal aunt, but I feel as if she did some serious behind the scenes work to not permit the writers to make her another Ruby, Dre’s mom. You can see her as a bold, but less secure woman who does not completely understand her sister’s life and is still willing to fiercely protect them and maintain her dignity. I feel as if she and Taraji P. Henson are taking characters that normally do not get a lot of love and celebrate them without sacrificing the essence of who their characters are. It is probably a horrible idea, but I kind of want Denise and Harrison, the grandfather, to get together because in the episodes where they hang out together, it works. I would like the writers to do a better job of giving Denise reasons for being at the house instead of mooching.
True confession: I kind of relate to Harrison more than I wish that I did and find him a hoot. My favorite scene in the entire series is a silent moment when he acts as if everything is fine, but realizes that he forgot to pick up his grandkids. He says the worst things and in a parallel universe with a time warp, I would love to see Karen from Will & Grace date him briefly until she realized that he was way too poor for her tastes. He is delightfully inappropriate, but in my heart, I feel as if he is definitely fiction and would possibly not show so much love to his family as he does considering his values. What better reason to watch television: fantasy!
Mixed-ish can get a little preachy and lose sight of character development and put ensemble chemistry second to its message. The worst episode of the first season was the Earth Day episode and was actually Bow’s nightmare. Some exchanges between Alicia and Paul, Bow’s parents, felt like the type of conversations that they would have had earlier in the relationship, but because the writers wanted to make a point to the viewers, those characters had to say it. The series occasionally forgets to show its work. For instance, Bow starts with few friends then slowly develops connections with different students, but other than through Bow, these friends are never shown finding shared common interests with each other so we got the Benetton friendship group without showing how it happened, which I will allow, but is really sloppy considering it was a twenty-three episode season, and it is part of Bow’s kiddie mission statement as awkward as it may be.
I generally am not a fan of kid actors. You can see the gears turning in their little heads. They go too big or rely on their cuteness. Well, Mixed-ish gives us one out of three good kid actors, which is better than I hoped for. Arica Himmel, who plays kid Bow, is seamless. She is not so good that I would follow her career, but I never wish that she was never on the show…. In the interest of full disclosure, I forgot that Bow even had a sister.
I hope that Mixed-ish gets renewed because I would love to see a second season. It is probably the final Barris helmed sitcom that will appear on network television so I hope that his ABC exit does not hurt the series’ standing.