I will be the black woman who tells you to watch Dave
Welcome to "wtf is ashley ray tweeting about now?" a newsletter where I try to explain and defend the nonsense that made up my twitter feed over the last week
**This talks about the first season of Dave on FX, but it’s essentially spoiler free. I don’t reveal anything that spoils the overall plot, but I talk about specific characters/moments. If you like watching TV shows without that info, maybe skip this part.**
I promise you, I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to end up here. I didn’t want this burden. But here we are: I have to be the black woman who tells you to watch Dave. Yes, Dave on FX. Yes, the TV show with the dumb billboards where he looks like a penis. Yes, I know that I am putting my voice and reputation on the line by saying this, but: You gotta watch Dave. Y’all are always saying, “listen to black women,” so I will be the one who tells you: this show is doing some interesting stuff. Also…it’s like, really good.
Understand that it’s hard for me to say that. I didn’t know anything about Lil Dicky when I started watching Dave. That didn’t matter, I already knew I hated the premise (white rapper deals with fame), hated the means by which the show came to exist (white guy with no TV or comedy experience gets comedy show because internet), and I hated everything about the hype that seemed to beg for critics to call it “the white version of Atlanta.” (It is not that. At all.) I was absolutely ready to ignore this show and figured most people would say it was fine, but forgettable.
Then we got quarantined and I had more hours to watch TV than ever before. Honestly, I didn’t have anything else to watch. You’re talking to someone who stays a week ahead on 90 Day Fiancé episodes. I watch a lot of TV. Before I knew it, my Hulu was saying “Up Next: Dave” and I didn’t try to stop it. At first, I didn’t love it. It was fine. The pilot was fine! Dave, as a central figure, was the worst part of the show. He’s stiff in the first few episodes, like they sent him to the Jerry Seinfeld school of acting. Everything that made me keep watching Dave was in the cast around Dave.
In fact, I thought, if you took Dave out of the show, it would be perfect! Everything about Gata, Dave’s bipolar hype man, felt funny, raw and realistic. As someone who suffers from bipolar disorder, I rarely see realistic depictions of what it’s like on TV. It’s even more rare to see this experience represented by black people. There’s Gretchen on You’re the Worst. And Rebecca on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but far too often those shows leaned on bipolar disorder like a plot device. It was simply a tool they’d pull out when they needed to justify a character’s crazy actions. Dave doesn’t do that. Gata never feels like a bomb that’s about to go off to drive the plot forward. He’s a fully realized, dimensional character with his own desires and motivations. The show makes it very clear early on that he makes it worth watching.
Then there’s Elz and Mike. Elz and Mike bring the comedic timing and charm you wish Dave would just like, try, even once to mimic. Respectively, they’re Dave’s producer and agent. Andrew Santino is a goddamn champ in the role of Mike. He was great in I’m Dying Up Here, but is next level as Mike (full disclosure: I think I have a crush on him? It’s confusing!). When the show makes you so annoyed with Dave that you just want to shake him, Mike and Elz work as perfect stand ins for the audience’s frustration. Eventually, it feels good to watch because they win you over to their side and they hate Dave too.
That’s not to say the show is perfect in its first season. There are a lot of things wrong with the way the show writes and portrays its female characters. First of all, there are only two: Emma and Ally. Ally is Dave’s girlfriend. Emma is Elz’s hookup buddy crush. Ally is unhappy as Dave’s girlfriend and his success makes her feel insecure. Emma is unsure of her relationship with Elz. That’s about it for the ladies in the show. Oh, also Ally is there to help Dave’s dick jokes land. Dave definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, which is a shame for a show that handles its black characters with such care and depth. It could be better. Ally is given a few moments of depth, but when you compare it to the overall lack of care given to shaping her character, it serves as the season’s lowest point (@lildickytweets if you need a black female TV writer on staff for season 2, I’m available).
Then, eventually in what I can only describe as incredibly smart writing…truly, some of the smartest writing on TV…Dave…gets you to like Dave. Dave starts to see consequences. He loses people in his life. He’s called out for everything I personally wanted to call him and Lil Dicky out for: appropriation, racism, privilege. You realize, the show had to make you hate Dave for the consequences to have the impact they do in the finale. It’s a build up that the show crafts in 4D, blurring the lines between Dave, Lil Dicky and Dave the character and Lil Dicky (the character?) and it all pays off.
So, why exactly, am I (a black woman) using my black femme superpowers to tell you to watch Dave? A show that is still mostly about a white man? Because Dave gets more right than it gets wrong and the things it gets right are incredibly good for representation on TV (fuck, I can’t believe I have to write that about the guy who did a song with Chris Brown, fuck I didn’t want to like this show). BUT LOOK, we have long demanded more diversity in TV shows. Hollywood tells us it’s impossible. Or they give us “black” shows and call it diversity while still keeping their new shows mostly white. Maybe there’s a quirky, black sidekick or token black guy in the office, but there aren’t a lot of comedies that show us how to…just have black people in them. Like, y’know, as characters with their own stories who also exist in a world with white characters, but aren’t just there to serve the white characters.
Dave is perhaps one of the best recent examples I’ve seen of that on TV. Mostly, because it had to be. Dave, as a lead, couldn’t win people over and the show knew that. That the show then took the time to minimize Dave so it could tell the stories of the black people around him is a tactic I rarely see and enjoyed. The storytelling at work here is really masterful and has changed the way I think about secondary characters in my own scripts (@lildickytweets please read my Dave spec). In the end, Dave doesn’t feel like a show about Dave, it just feels like a show about people. A really, really good show about people.
Also, I did have a hard time with some of the dick jokes though.
What else have I been tweeting about?
I promise I’m watching things that aren’t Dave.
Insecure
I’m still reviewing this season for The A.V. Club! I gave last Sunday’s episode my first ever A+ and then found out we are not allowed to do that! Still, it really was that good!Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
I’ve been rewatching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to prepare for the new interactive episode coming out May 12th on Netflix. I had a love-hate relationship when I first watched this show. It has some of my absolute favorite jokes. I think Titus is one of the best TV characters, period. I think the “Kimmy Kidnaps Gretchen” episode is in my top 25 episodes of TV of all time. Still, there’s a lot of weird race stuff, right??? It makes me uncomfortable and still does! I don’t like how there aren’t any black women who aren’t big sassy stereotypes. I don’t like the whole Titus/geisha thing! I don’t like the whole “Native American played by a white woman” thing! Anyway, it turns out I still don’t like those things, but the show is still really funny and worth watching. (@TinaFey please let me be your female Donald Glover. I will teach you how to craft well-rounded black female characters and you can teach me everything.)Desus & Mero
This show has really been making me smile during quarantine. I love that they’re doing the show and every new episode makes my heart warm. It makes me feel like things will be okay. Thanks, Desus and Mero.Parks and Rec Quarantine Episode
I think it is nice when shows do nice things for their fans. It was sweet. We’re all doing our best. There were some real good jokes. What else can we ask for at this time?The Midnight Gospel
It’s on Netflix. Watch this fucking show.The Last Dance
I am from Chicago, but I am not a Chicagoan. That is a distinction I like to make. I lived in Chicago for ~7 years during and after college. I grew up in Rockford, IL. However, my mom and stepdad were in a long distance relationship. He lived in Chicago. Every other weekend from the ages of ~7-16, we would go visit him and the other weekends, he’d visit us. I’d stay with him over summers. (Yeah, my love of long distance relationships is totally based in something normal and healthy!) My stepdad was a Chicagoan (i.e. born and raised). So, I love Chicagoans and I love watching Chicagoans be happy. I do not really care about sports, but I fucking love sports history. This documentary hits a lot of buttons for me. Also, I was born in 1990 so I was too young to comprehend any of this when it was actually happening. Maybe it’s boring if you remember the games?
Please just get personal with us
This is the part of the newsletter where I’ll answer your relationship advice questions and talk about random shit in my life.
I don’t really feel like giving advice today. People did send me some cool questions, though! I got into a very interesting conversation with someone about a bad hookup they had in college, but hadn’t gotten over. They weren’t proud of how they ended things (they slept with a guy, realized they didn’t like him that much and then ghosted and blocked him on everything) and wondered if it meant they still had feelings for the person, even though they didn’t really have deep feelings for them.
I think in those situations, it’s not the person who sticks with us, it’s the guilt. This person was smart and mature and knew they should’ve handled the situation better by being communicative. Instead they handled it the wrong way. And because they’re a smart, good person capable of understanding when they fuck up, they know they handled it the wrong way. That’s what sticks with you: the guilt over not being your best self in a moment where it would’ve served both of you to be your best self. Don’t worry though, it doesn’t mean you still have feelings for him. It’s about the expectations you put on yourself. Next time, you’ll be your best self and, eventually, you’ll forgive yourself too.
So anyway, I’ve been doing video sessions with my therapist. This isn’t that unusual for me. Since leaving Chicago, I had a hard time finding a new therapist and my old one offered video services so I was already pretty adapted to the experience. I eventually did find a therapist in LA, but my Chicago therapist is this amazing black woman from New Orleans who like…just gets it, y’know? So, I’ve been seeing her again since we’re all videochattin’ anyway. It’s been interesting reconnecting with her! I love having someone whose only job has been holding me accountable off and on for nearly four years.
Today, we got into an argument we’ve gotten into probably 6 times in the last two years. Back in 2018, I was dating this guy. One day, I said to him, thanks for always loving me for who I am. He replied, “I mostly love you for who you could be.” And, dear reader, I tell you, I loved this!! I still love this, even though everyone says I shouldn’t! To be clear, I have more than let my feelings for the guy go, but I still love the sentiment of this statement. My therapist, at the time, did not understand. She said it was a pretty blatantly shitty thing to say to a partner. She continued to say that over the next two years. Today, she said she finally gets it.
Maybe it’s because I actually took the time to explain myself. I don’t need a partner who says they love me no matter what my flaws are, I love me like that. I love me for who I am, probably more than anyone else ever could. I love me for who I am so much, I sometimes forget who I could be. I liked having a partner who’d say they loved me for what I could be because (to me) it meant they wouldn’t let me forget my potential. I consider myself a work in progress. As much as I love myself, I also love the changes I’m constantly making to improve myself. Loving myself as I am, however, hasn’t always led to love what I’m capable of. So, I’ve sought partners who encourage me to think beyond my current self and do the same.
After my therapist and I both agreed again that the guy was still the absolute worst to date, she said she finally understood why I’d taken that lesson from that relationship. She said it actually was a pretty good lesson to learn.
So, basically, it took two years, but I finally won this battle in therapy. Never give up.
Thanks for reading! I hope any of this was good!