If I wanted to see images of Black and Latinx kids being shot up and bleeding to death on screen, I’d unblock Shaun King.  I certainly wouldn’t expect to find it in a comedy series on Netflix.

Unfortunately, that’s where I end up at the season one finale of the new streaming show On My Block.

I never intended to binge the show in one sitting. Like the novice screenwriter I am, I was just supposed to watch the pilot, take some craft notes and move onto the next case study. But then the story of black and brown kids growing up in south central LA hooked me.

Maybe it was the scene where the main cast of teen friends, Monse, Ruby, Jamal and Cesar are running from gunshots during a party and arguing as they ran about what caliber gun they were hearing. Was it a .45? A .44? They’re ducking and dodging when a few more shots ring out, then they decide in unison, “.357!”

That deft mix of humor and heartbreak had me rooting for the kids, investing in their stories, and laughing my ass off. It is, after all, a comedy.

Still, I appreciate that On My Block doesn’t shy away from the fact that its main characters live with the threat of violence every day. These high school freshman already know to hide out from the police during a lockdown and to look straight ahead when they see a gang initiating a new member by jumping him. It’s a reflection of what many folks who grew up around street gang and police violence experience.

As a result, death is no stranger to the kids or the people in the neighborhood and therefore the audience. When Cesar’s fine older brother Oscar gets out of prison, Cesar’s hopes of a future as an architect start to slip away when he’s forced to join Oscar’s gang. The palpable threat on Cesar’s life persists throughout the season.

But even as it deals with gang violence, the impact of deportation on the character Olivia (whose parents must leave her behind), racism, classism and police terrorism, the show remains as hopeful and fun as the main cast of kids themselves.

Until, it doesn’t.

The last moments of the finale cross a wholly gratuitous line when a member of a rival gang seeking revenge on Cesar pulls up to Olivia’s fiesta de quince años and opens fire, hitting Olivia and Ruby instead of Cesar. The season ends graphically, with the two teens bleeding out from their chests on the floor, Ruby gasping for breath in shock, while a happy birthday phone call from Olivia’s deported parents goes unanswered.

And for what?

While life may not seem to have a rhyme or reason, TV plots certainly should, just as a show billed as a comedy ought to be funny. So what’s funny about two main characters (teenagers!) bleeding out on the floor at a birthday party? What besides sheer melodrama is gained by this plot point?

Who is served by shooting up these kids on screen?

Certainly not the brown and black folks who flocked to the show to see coming of age stories that reflected our own. And if a black and brown audience isn’t being served by this gruesome finale, for which audience was this show even produced?

Is this a show for black and brown folks? Or just a show explaining to outsiders what life in the South Central hood is like for black and brown folks?

The distinction matters. Because the former kind of show is both a salve for our collective trauma and an oasis to marginalized folks who thirst to see ourselves on screen. The latter triggers our trauma and is a tired—and historically pointless—plea for the privileged to care about our lives.

For creators of color — especially with Netflix money and worldwide distribution — that latter kind of show is a complete failure of the imagination.

Yet, the writers had no problem with fantasy when they had a white police officer not arrest or kill Cesar during the lockdown scene, but instead rushed Cesar over to Ruby’s house — with sirens and all — because the cop was so invested in making sure Cesar’s current boo Olivia didn’t snitch about their hook-up to his secret boo Monse. Suuuure.

Then, after Monse and Olivia both hooked up with Cesar, the writers continued to show their range for reimagining what’s possible when neither of the girls let their treachery, jealousy or affection for a boy ruin their brand-new friendship for even a second. (Seriously, these are the most mature teen girls ever!) But when it comes to the kids facing gun violence directly, suddenly we have to be back in the real world, bullets hot, teen bodies running cold? I call foul.

Black and brown communities aren’t the only ones dealing with gun violence, and yet there’s no white teen Netflix “comedy” that ends with half the cast being brutalized with an AR-15 in a school shooting. That kind of episode would never even be allowed to air.

As we’ve seen with the media’s treatment of the Parkland school shooting survivors in contrast to the criminalization and wanton disregard with which Black Lives Matter protestors have been treated, there is a sense of protection and preciousness with which white children are handled that our children are not afforded.

Shouldn’t that alone stir within creators of color a sense of obligation to our onscreen teens, especially since we can’t protect them in the real world?

I’m not suggesting creatives write “respectable” characters or limit character arcs to only what’s uplifting and inspiring. I’m just saying don’t retraumatize us by shooting up Black and brown kids in a comedy series for the sake of being “realistic.”

Fiction is the one place where creatives get to make all the rules and reimagine what’s real. Creatives of color ought to dream bigger and better for us.

We deserve it.

 

Brooke Obie’s award-winning Black revolution novel Book of Addis: Cradled Embers reimagines the ending of slavery in America, because how it’s been aint how it’s gotta be.