"Dear White People" Chapter X (TV Episode 2017) Poster

(TV Series)

(2017)

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dougmacdonaldburr29 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers
To all the people saying this is high minded satire, you are wrong. South Park, Larry Sanders & Chappelle's show are great satire. This is corporate sponsored politically correct flavour of the month junk. George Soros - the same man who spent over 1 Billion dollars trying to get Hillary elected - recently acquired shares in Netflix and it really shows. Amy Schuemer, Bill Nye and now this...

The plot is poorly constructed and the characters are one dimensional and very unlikable.

Sam is a cliché angry student activist. She has a good boyfriend and cheats on him for basically no reason. She is pretty much always wrong and usually makes things a lot worse, yet she retains a smug sense of unearned moral superiority.

Coco works as hard as she can to be black Barbie. She is kind of a jerk and thinks she is smarter than everyone. In her defence, compared to the other characters she might be.

Troy is the class president. He lies all the time and uses everyone else for his own benefit. As any good politician should I suppose.

Lionel is a black and gay. That seems to be the entire extent of his personality. He also doesn't seem to mind selling everyone else out for a good story.

Reggie is an idiot.

One of the main jokes of the episode is the white kids are protesting about excessive alcohol consumption. That is supposed to be ridiculous. There were over a dozen alcohol related deaths at colleges in 2016. The black kids are against black kids being murdered by campus security at an Ivy league college. That has never happened. Even if you say this is a metaphor for black lives matter, if you examine all of BLM's cases there has not yet been a single case where a white officer killed a black suspect who was not resisting arrest (or beating them to death and reaching for their gun like Michael Brown) where the officer was not legally punished. Just google any BLM case or watch any number of youtube videos debunking them. These people have to molest the truth so much to try and fit their narrative and even then it all falls apart. All shows like this do is keep us divided and make race relations worse and not better. Why would a global elite oppressing all of us want to do that?... I cannot fault the production, but, the writing is just bad. I am cancelling Netflix. I know that seems dramatic, but, there has just been far too much SJW trash recently and I already own enough good DVDs.

There may be some people who actually like this rubbish, after all Justin Beiber has fans. That still doesn't mean it is good. I am suspicious of many of the good reviews. Journalists can clearly be bought by their higher ups and on this site some of the accounts are brand new and this is their only review. I may be paranoid, but, I wouldn't put any dirty trick past George Soros and his goons. So do yourself a favour and skip this S***!
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S1: Engaging and thoughtful, but not wholly successful and a bit too arch for its own good
bob the moo12 November 2017
I heard of this show via the so-called alt-right, who, as is their way, took any opportunity to form an extreme and unshakable opinion with only the barest of facts on which to base it. Cancelling Netflix was the cry, along with the usual 'what ifs' of reversing the race in the title, about this being why Hillary lost etc. I had seen the film prior to this, so I knew at least the film was not what the title suggested, plus it was not a great film even if it was an interesting one.

In the same way the show is interesting but doesn't all come together. The narrative structure is smart, but it highlights the episodic nature of it, making it feel like contained dramas within a loose frame – which of course is what it is. This is fine for the most part, until near the end when it realizes that it needs to have a proper thread to justify a second season, and it is really clunky to see it suddenly try to reach that gear. Within the episodes though, there is a lot going on of interest. Those that decided it was an anti-white / anti-straight / anti-male piece will certainly find plenty to point at and be outraged, but at the same time the show has lots of targets for satire and mockery. From the dry and droll narration that opens each episode, there is a tone of absurdity below the surface that is shared equally. The choking identity politics of campus life, the self-importance of those not yet in the real world, the SJW's fighting for the death of gender- specific pronouns, all of these are ripe targets and certainly not given a free pass.

The absurdity is countered by realism though, and the show does well to have the real issues in there, even if the reactions and positions are gently mocked due to their extremes. Identity politics, racism, sexual politics all get covered and in smart ways. As much as r/T_D will assume it is one note, the writing draws on politics between races, but also between those who are light or dark within the same group. We get the character of Gabe, who is able to bring out the element which the alt-right would empathize with, which is the feeling that the feeling of having to be ashamed, or silent, because of the color of his skin, while also knowing that he does have advantages because of it. I've read some who got angry at the show for making Gabe a villain in the eyes of the black students, as if this was the show making a point – however to me the point being made (voiced clearly by Lionel) is about misplaced anger, and the damage it does in creating division and mistrust.

Just like the film then, it has plenty to like, plenty of interest, plenty of sharp humor, and yet it doesn't come together in a total package that convinces. The characters have heart but are broadly written (one critic described each character as a walking op-ed piece, and you can see that). I enjoyed it for what it did well, and enjoyed seeing it show up those that hated it without seeing it, but it is a flawed series.
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