There are some points of tvl criticism I'm willing to debate and where I can very much see both sides (or even think the #haters are stretching it a little) but like. You cannot really deny that this season has shown a pattern of prioritizing white characters and their emotional journey over characters of color. On top of that, so many of the jokes are "punching down", starting with the pronoun joke in ep 1 followed by a continuous barrage of throw-away comments. And then, six episodes into a season with an all-white writers room, we have Claudia say "there's something etched in your ribs that says you're a slave". There's no reckoning with how horrifically racist this statement is, neither in the text nor the paratext. It's just sitting there, poisoning what otherwise could have been an incredible scene. Poisoning a season that felt like it was actually slowly finding its footing. It's white privilege to watch that scene and not feel, on some level, attacked by those racist words put in a Black actor's mouth by white writers. To not be haunted by the racist implications of "my bleak, black life." Before, a lot of the writing choices registered as thoughtless; at this point, it's hard to see them as anything but malicious.
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