[MEDIA] Parting Ways with The Boondocks |
I’m afraid I’m going to have to break up with The Boondocks.
I realize this is its last season and I would like to stick with it until the very end, but it’s just not working. If at all possible, I’d like to avoid the drama. Let’s just do this thing quietly. We can still be friends (in that weird way exes continue to be “friends” but never actually speak to one another), but what we had is no more.
Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe over the years, The Boondocks and I have grown apart. We’re in two different places in our lives now. I can’t say what it is, but I know one thing for sure: I don’t find this shit funny anymore. I’ve watched four out of five episodes in season three and only one has generated any genuine laughs. During the season premiere I lamented on Twitter “I hate that this show is this good,” because it reminded me of why I loved it and a part of me was disappointed this was going to be the last season.
After last Sunday night, The Boondocks can leave, take the money, the house, the kids, the collection of porcelain Fred Hampton figurines and whatever else it wants. I don’t care anymore. I’m no longer laughing.
The first season was amazing. The second had its moments. The current season feels like a complete bastardization of all the good the show once was. The stories aren’t well thought out. The characters are caricatures of themselves. The jokes are reaching for controversy where there is none and playing to the lowest common denominator (I get it, Riley thinks everyone is either gay, a hater, or a gay hater. It was funny the first dozen times when I thought it was satire, but now it’s just a product of lazy, unimaginative writing).
The animation, however, is amazing. That part can’t be denied. This season has produced some awe-inspiring fight scenes that rival the best of any martial arts flick. But while Aaron McGruder indulges in his love of kung-fu movies and anime, the laughs…where are the laughs?
Where is the incendiary social commentary? Where is the heart? Where is that thing that made you care for these characters and their stories outside of the velocity at which they could scream “bitch ass nigga” on basic cable? Instead, the ghost of Stinkmeaner and a fake Fred Sanford show up to decapitate Bushido Brown. Why, exactly? Something is missing. I hate to see a show with immense potential and a talent such as McGruder’s be wasted on Uncle Ruckus’ (no relation) useless and unfunny Asian jokes.
Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Perhaps I should give the show more time, after all it’s only been five episodes. Perhaps, in the next two and half months, The Boondocks will remind me why I fell in love in the first place.
Perhaps…but not likely.
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