TV Review - Woke (2020)

Keith Knight is a cartoonist whose principal comic strip was The K Chronicles, which was published in the San Francisco Examiner, starting back in the 1990's. The K Chronicles was semi-autobiographical, focusing on his life as an African-American with a German wife. It also touched upon politics, centering on the presidency of George W. Bush. Knight is the creator of this series, which is an adaptation of The K Chronicles, with some definite changes. For example, the series is set in the present day not in the late 90's or early 2000's. It also changes the trajectory of his career, at least ostensibly. I'm not sure how true-to-life this series is, but it seems as though Knight has taken some liberties. I'm not convinced those liberties ultimately help the story he's telling. There's also other wrinkles that I'm also not convinced help here.

Lamorne Morris (The New Girl) stars as Keef Knight, the proxy for the real Keith Knight. Keef is a cartoonist who lives in San Francisco. He isn't doing a comic strip about his life. He's doing a comic strip called "Toast & Butter," which is literally about an anthropomorphized slice of toast and butter. We don't get much about this comic strip, but one can assume that it's akin to Calvin and Hobbes or a a comic strip like that. There is an assumption that Keef's comic is doing something more political, but Keef insists that "Toast & Butter" isn't a political comic strip and that it's just cute and funny, nothing deeper. This is the first liberty that Knight takes because presumably The K Chronicles was political, given that it did comment on President Bush.

Knight's real-life comic began before Bush's term in office, but presumably The K Chronicles had just as much of a political bent. I don't know. Maybe in real-life, Knight's comic didn't start out political and maybe he didn't start out commenting on politics at first, but he got there over time. This series could be attempting to show how a person might start out apolitical at least publicly but then move toward being more of a political activist. For Keef in this series, there is a pivot point, a moment where his journey switches from being apolitical and just making a cute comic to being an activist who wants to confront social problems. That pivot point is an encounter he has with a police officer.

Obviously, a lot of media from black creators have commented on race relations in America. A recent topic has been the Black Lives Matter cases where unarmed black men have been killed at the hands of police. The cases have expanded from extrajudicial killings to police brutality in general toward African-Americans or excessive force. Keef's encounter with the police officer is one such example of excessive force. He thankfully isn't killed or totally brutalized, but it results in a trauma that changes the course of his life. The rest of the series is essentially Keef trying to deal with or reconcile that trauma. Netflix's Dear White People (2017) did a better job of charting a character dealing with such a trauma. The film Blindspotting (2018) also did a better job, but, like that 2018 film, Knight's series does culminate in a pretty compelling scene where Keef confronts the cop who traumatized him. There is a bit of reckoning of what the cop did and how it affected Keef.

Until that moment, which doesn't occur until the last episode, the series feels like it's spinning its wheels. It stumbles through moments where race relations is examined. The show's biggest swing in that regard is a ridiculous idea that doesn't really resonate. Whether it's based on something real or not, it's not dramatized in a way that would make the idea resonate or have any kind of gravity to anchor it to the real-world. Knight's sense of humor probably just doesn't jive with mine, but I never really found much of anything here funny. Even while the series was actively trying to be funny, none of it really resonated. There are active comical elements, namely voice-overs from actual comedians in conjunction with animation mixed with live-action, but those elements or aspects of the show never really resonated either.

How the series spins its wheels is by having Keef lose his comic strip to a corporation that was going to syndicate it but dropped him after Keef has a nervous breakdown that is caught on video and then goes viral. The corporation retains the rights to his comic, so Keef is left with nothing. Keef then tries to find work outside of cartoons. We also get a lot of scenes of Keef interacting with his two roommates. One of whom is funny. The other is annoying. Blake Anderson (Workaholics) plays Gunther and he's pretty funny. T. Murph plays Clovis and he's the annoying one. He's particularly annoying in the way he treats women. His charm can quickly turn to gross when talking to women and his aggressiveness could be borderline stalking when it comes to one woman named Ayana, played by Sasheer Zamata (Saturday Night Live). Clovis is also too dumb to realize that she's a lesbian who has no interest in him, yet he still pursues her. The series wastes time on Clovis' stupidity instead of addressing the core issue with Keef.

That core issue results in Keef having hallucinations where he sees inanimate objects come to life and start talking to him. Those objects come to life using animation, but only limited animation to give those objects eyes and mouths in order to visualize their speaking to him. All kind of objects begin to speak to him, including bottles of beer, a trash can and even his drawings of "Toast & Butter" themselves. However, the object that talks to him the most is the marker with which he uses to draw his comics. It's called Marker and it's voiced by JB Smooth (Curb Your Enthusiasm). Hearing Smooth's voice, as well as the voices of the other objects is hilarious at times, as Smooth gets great lines or rants, urging Keef to be more political. Yet, the series walks this line of not deciding if these hallucinations are some true mental illness or if it's just the show being surreal. The series never really leans in either direction.

Going back to the show's biggest swing in regard to addressing race relations, we get the episode titled "Black People For Rent." As mentioned, it's also the most ridiculous. In that episode, Keef puts up flyers with the slogan "Black People For Rent" and he attaches a phone number that people can call. It's supposed to be a commentary on the idea that African-Americans are still seen as commodities to be bought and sold. It's also a commentary on white people liking black culture but not caring about actual black people. It's just Knight's way of going about it here felt so gimmicky and like a shtick that might work in a cartoon but not when it's in live-action form. I just never bought what happens would happen, or if it did, what the characters do about it never excited. Yet, that nugget of an idea has been utilized in shows like Insecure (2016) and Atlanta (2016) where Issa Rae and Donald Glover respectively have executed dramatic scenarios that reinforce that idea better.

Finally, there are some half-hearted or weird things the series does that weren't all that effective. At one point in Episode 7, we see one person on a bus wearing a mask. That person is referenced as doing so in order to avoid the coronavirus. Yet, this series was supposedly filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic started. There's also a story line in Episode 6 were Gunther almost has a threesome. Gunther brings back to his apartment a couple that is already married or in a committed relationship. They're clearly swingers looking to add a third person in their sexual activity. Yet, we get nothing about the couple like how long they've been together, who suggested they have this threesome or why they're doing it. Given the recent scandal, involving Jerry Falwell Jr., the show could have provided some insight on how a supposedly heterosexual couple could add a third and what would be the nuances, but the show cowers away from that.

Rated TV-MA-LS.
Running Time: 30 mins.

Available on Hulu.