One problem I've always had about this show is making EVERYTHING about race, EVERYTHING is a big deal, everything is a fight. No aiming to remove race as a factor to move for actual racial equality. It's so bad they even pointed it out themselves a couple of episodes earlier. The final episode had one so bad, making it a PLOT POINT, that I was driven to write this rare review.
Starting the episode with preparing the grandparents to move out, boxes and RV in driveway, permanently racially-oblivious white neighbour Janine comes over. What is clearly supposed to be blatantly obvious but is way too subtle, she has assumed the whole family is moving. In show: This triggers Narrator Dre to go off about still not being accepted after all these years, of neighbours wanting them gone and not accepting them, and gossiping about them. In reality: So?
Firstly it's a logical conclusion, a bunch of boxes and an RV in front of a house, first thought is the family is moving. It's a natural conclusion to the facts as presented. Any family. Secondly, neighbours gossip! About everyone, about every little thing! I declare with absolute certainty that a white family or Chinese family or Indian family or any other would be talked about in the same way! And they're long time residents, if they were leaving it would be major neighbourhood news/gossip! "OMG, the Johnsons are moving out? They've been here forever!"... For ANY family. I was tempted to submit this as a Goof, but I suspect it would be rejected as too subjective, especially since it was clearly written to be about race.
The fallout is that out of nowhere Dre decides to de-integrate. Move away from the white people, quit trying to be accepted as an equal without regarding race, surround himself with black people, even leaving his job full of white people. This quitting move is tripley dumb: Not only this isolating himself away from white people, but also he has spent the last two episodes fixated on the realization that with Devonte he won't be able to retire, he needs to keep making money, AND they idiotically for no reason decide to move, to a luxurious house which clearly costs considerably more than the house they're leaving (going from a standard neighborhood to a higher altitude one where they have a multi-million dollar view).
They're upheaving the whole family's lives over not understanding what neighbours are like? Leaving their beautiful comfortable home of 17 years, the only one Jack, Diane and Devonte have known, essentially the only one Zoey and Junior have known, adopting an unnecessary debt and loss of income, all in one fell swoop! At the same time the grandparents are moving out! Making all these huge nonsensical changes in a Season Finale could work, to give them new writing directions for the next season, showing how they adjust to their new circumstances, but this is the SERIES Finale! There's no more writing left!
Finally, this show has always been too sparse with laughs, doing Special-Episodes-Which-Are-Too-Often-To-Be-Special episodes, getting too serious too often, forgetting constantly they're a sitcom, but this episode they should have ended the show with SOME fun, come on!
(I'm also realizing now, they've never given Jack & Diane relationships, and the show ended with them and Junior single, seems kind of bleak. They had interests and crushes, but that's it. No idea about Zoey since they exiled her to an obscure channel - but somehow kept her in the credits anyway, despite being almost entirely absent save a cameo or two - but I believe on this show she didn't have any long term relationships either).
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