Black-ish's Chris Brown Episode Was a Shockingly Ill-Conceived Miss

Black-ish is not afraid to take big swings.

Sometimes the show's attempts to interrogate the culture pay off in brilliant episodes like January's "Lemons," a ripped-from-the-headlines conversation about Donald Trump's then-impending inauguration that grappled with a lot of different ideas about what America means to different people. 

But sometimes it results in bad ideas like Wednesday night's "Richard Youngsta," which guest-starred one of America's biggest pop cultural villains in R&B singer and abuser of women Chris Brown and acted like that wasn't a big deal.

In the episode, Brown plays a rapper named Rich Youngsta who works on an ad campaign with Dre (Anthony Anderson). Dre is excited about what he thinks is going to be a blockbuster champagne campaign with the catchphrase "put some Uvo on it," but when he shows it to the family, Bow (Tracee Ellis Ross) and Ruby (Jenifer Lewis) argue that the commercial reinforces negative stereotypes about black people (an ignorant white friend they screen it for says it's funny like how Madea is funny).

They give him a lecture about the immorality of a black man profiting off racist depictions of black people. Dre defends himself that he's doing the best with what he has to work with, but when he sees Jack (Miles Brown) dancing and putting some Uvo on a D he got on a test, he sees that he's wrong. He changes the commercial to a sleek "taste the good life" spot. He kept his pride while doing right by his people.

The positive message was undercut by the presence of Chris Brown, who isn't a role model for anyone, black or otherwise. Brown's once-promising (though still flourishing) career has been haunted by repeated instances of violence he has never done much to atone for. Most notoriously, he once beat his then-girlfriend Rihanna so badly she required hospitalization. He publicly apologized for that, but he didn't change; just last month, another ex-girlfriend was granted a restraining order against him after she accused him of punching her in the stomach and pushing her down the stairs during their relationship.