![]() In fact more than once I paused ABLSS and wondered aloud if people who weren’t black women would even understand what was making the action on screen so funny let me tell you that the sensation alone was liberating. I couldn’t possibly explain the back-breaking team effort that goes in to making comedy feel this effortless or what it feels like – for the first time in my comedy loving life – to enjoy a sketch without first having to filter it through several male, white, and straight lenses just to get the joke. And we aren’t going anywhere, any time soon. A Black Lady Sketch Show recognizes that “black ladies” come across a variety of gender identities and sexualities. It’s a generations long trend that’s slowly changing. Black queer women and women of color should not have to watch predominately white casts where our character is a mere sidekick or after thought just to be able to see ourselves. I’ve written before about how difficult it is to find black LGBTQ+ representation in black television. As has Laverne Cox! I couldn’t stop laughing! To be honest, all of the guest casting is a rolodex of Who’s Who in Black Hollywood (get ready y’all, even Patti LaBelle is coming!) In a future episode, a black bisexual woman describes her sexual awakening via The X Files’ Mulder and Scully. The first two episodes include two sketches specifically designed around black queer culture and, in an important detail to highlight, when taken together both of those sketches demonstrate a variety of black masc lesbian presentations that’s nearly impossible to find on television. ![]() I can’t believe it took me this long to tell you that, on top of everything else, A Black Lady Sketch Show is gaaaaaay! There are three black queer women in the writers’ room (Lauren Ashley Smith, Ashley Nicole Black, and Autostraddle fan favorite Brittani Nichols!) and a black queer woman (Ashley Nicole Black) in the central cast of four. It also means that I know what I’m talking about when I say this: A Black Lady Sketch Show is so good that it’s positively dumbfounded me. This means I was an easy and early sell for ABLSS. I firmly believe that the complexity and nuances of black humor are not showcased nearly enough mainstream comedy. Despite his painful and upsettingly stubborn insistence on transphobia, I can still quote most of The Chapelle Show from memory (even when I wish I couldn’t). ![]() When I was ‘90s kid, my cousin and I would do our homework to reruns of In Living Color with the volume on low so Granny wouldn’t hear us doubled over in laughter. I’ve watched every episode of Saturday Night Live for at least the last 15 years. I first fell in love with A Black Lady Sketch Show the minute I heard that Issa Rae and Robin Thede were assembling an entire black women’s comedy writing room. It opens right at the top with Megan’s distinct flow, “All the hot girls make it pop, pop, pop/ Bad bitches with the bag say ah-ya-ya!”ĭo bad bitches sit in front of their computers in a hot pink sports bra with a blueberry stain down the front from breakfast that they were too busy to clean? While eating frozen white chocolate chips straight out of the Nestle bag because that’s easier than figuring out air conditioning and we’re writing on a deadline, so fuck it? That’s the situation in my apartment right now. Even its black girl muppet-puppet theme song is a tribute to Hot Girls! Never mind the fact that it’s also one of the most memorable and catchy black television themes that I can remember – seemingly destined to go down in history alongside Rosie Perez and Jennifer Lopez dancing to In Living Color and Aretha Franklin’s rendition of A Different World. ![]() The line between Hot Girl Summer and Hot Mess Summer is thin, and I found it. Which is probably why I’ve been putting off writing about HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show. I think I felt intimidated, maybe a little unworthy. This summer has been a blur of anxiety attacks, fights I don’t mean to keep tripping into with loved ones, racism and micro aggressions at work, holding down my friends through various dramas of their own, and did I mention a few hospital visits? Oh yeah, I had a handful of those, too. I know it’s controversial, but hear me out – almost every black girl I know who started summer joyfully quoting Megan Thee Stallion lyrics on their IG captions and in their group chats is ending summer barely holding on. We, the black delegation, declared 2019 the Hot Girl Summer and we played ourselves.
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