Written by: Anique Coney

The Last O.G. is a tale of what happens when street hustlers are forced into retirement and learn how to get their grown-man on.

This hilarious raw comedy is a TBS original, co-created and co-executive produced by Jordan Peele and Tracy Morgan.

The show really hits home for me, as it takes place in my hometown of Brooklyn, New York. I moved to Atlanta about 12 years ago, and I do not get to visit home as often as I would like. The longest that I have ever gone without visiting was about 3 years. When I finally went back for a visit, I could not believe how much everything had changed in such a short amount of time. Gentrification has definitely made Brooklyn a much different place than the Brooklyn that I remember from my youth. As Tracy Morgan’s character emerges from prison after 15 years, not only does he have to adjust to being in the free world again, he also has to adjust to the new Brooklyn as well as finding out he’s a father. 

Last season (the first season), we were introduced to Tracy’s character, Tray — a drug dealer who went to prison for 15 years. Unbeknownst to him, his girlfriend was pregnant with twins at the time of his arrest. Wanting to give her twins a normal life and protect them from the truth, Shannon/Shay (Tiffany Haddish) never told Tray about her pregnancy or about his children, nor did she tell the children about Tray. Upon his release from prison, Tray goes looking for Shay to pick up where they left off, but he learns that, while she is still living in Brooklyn, she has a completely new life now.

Shay is not the around-the-way girl that Tray remembers. She is now super successful and living with her white husband (Josh) who has been raising Tracy’s children as his own. Initially, Tray is not feeling anything about the situation and does whatever he can to be a part of his children’s lives — and hilarity ensues. His old-school, hard-knock way of doing things often clashes with the new-school (and often somewhat spoiled) ways that the children are used to. Despite everyone’s reservations, Tray eventually begins to win over the twins and even Josh. Begrudgingly, even Shay becomes supportive of Tray and his new life. 

In the Season 2 premiere, it really hits Tray that he missed 15 years of raising his children. While at the halfway house where he lives, the other guys beam with pride about being there when their children were born and being involved in the birth. Tray immediately goes to Shay and Josh’s house and asks Shay if she has video of the birth of the twins. Tray is visibly emotional and desperate just to get glimpses of his children’s early years and milestones. Shay agrees to look for pictures, videos, and other mementos in the basement, while commenting that her pregnancy was not an easy time in her life. We witness an emotional moment when Shay has a flashback to a time when she tried to visit Tray in prison to tell him that she was pregnant. However, she loses her nerve after getting off the visitor’s bus to the prison when a little girl walks up to her and asks, “Is your daddy in timeout like my daddy?”

Shay continues to remember her early years with the twins and being a struggling single mom (Josh did not come into her life until the twins were four years old). In addition to the regular struggles of single motherhood, Shay has been trying to build a relationship with her own mother, who has struggled with drug addiction throughout most of Shay’s life. Unfortunately, this was a very common problem in 1980–1990s Brooklyn during the crack epidemic. In the present, we see Tray and Shay go to her storage unit to find the VHS tape of the twins being born. They finally find the tape, but they do not have VCR. Shay again flashes back and recalls that her mother stole her VCR for money to buy drugs. 

Tray and Shay share an emotional moment when they finally watch the video and Tray thanks Shay for being so strong and giving birth to their children alone. Shay further reflects on her climb from the bottom to the top: getting into college, meeting her future husband, and building the life that she now has. We gain a better understanding of Shay — truly a rose that grew from concrete. 

Although The Last O.G. is a hilarious show, it uses its platform to bring attention to social matters in a way that only Tracy Morgan’s homespun, street philosophy can achieve. Season 2 touches on topics such as racism, drug addiction, the many challenges of prisoner re-entry, why it is/is not okay for white people to use the N-word, and so much more. We watch the blossoming bromance between Tray and Josh, the rebuilding of a friendship between Tray and Shay, and Tray’s growth as a father. We are introduced to Tray’s mother (Anna Maria Horsford) who appears to be reluctant to believe that her son has turned his life around. We see the head of the halfway house (Cedric the Entertainer) encourage and support Tray’s dreams and goals, while still roasting him every chance he gets. The show also provides a great bit of nostalgia for all the ’80s and ’90s babies. With a solid and hilarious cast, relatable present-day issues and the perfect blend of street wisdom and family togetherness, The Last O.G. is what TV has been missing.

Anique Coney is a Brooklyn-born writer with a talent for profanity and sharing unsolicited advice, often at the same time. A proud mom, blerd, and introvert, you can find her in the A…or on Twitter (@bodgabetty).

The post Review: ‘The Last O.G.’ is What TV Has Been Missing appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Just like the start of a horror movie, it was just past midnight on April 26, 1986, when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant began the meltdown that would result in a full-on nuclear explosion.

Until the growing threat of climate change, the Chernobyl catastrophe was the world’s worst man-made disaster on a social, cultural, and environmental level in spite of the fact that the official death toll released by the Soviet government remains at an unrealistic 31. Craig Mazin’s Chernobyl and its five episodes of creeping dread could not have come at a better modern socio-cultural and political moment as the US administration continues to taunt North Korea over their nuclear aspirations and an unhinged wannabe-autocrat holds the codes to America’s own nuclear arsenal.

I had just celebrated my seventh birthday earlier that month when the news of the Chernobyl disaster broke through the Soviet cloud of disinformation and appeared on international networks. I was already a baby horror fan, watching films like An American Werewolf in London and Alien long before I should have been, so this real-life horror story grabbed my attention immediately. But none of the grown-ups would talk to me about it. For the next couple years, and especially after a move to Pakistan — one of Russia’s allies — that had me going to school with many Russian diplomats’ kids I was obsessed with Chernobyl. As we learn in Mazin’s dramatization of the events, actual truth about the incident was not making it out past the USSR’s borders. So I read books about nuclear power, apocalyptic novels like Stephen King’s The Stand and microfiche opinion pieces about what happened in Chernobyl and what it must have been like for all the people who had been removed from the exclusion zone. And those who had been forced to stay behind for the cleanup. I researched results of the nuclear bombs dropped over Nagasaki and Hiroshima as well. Yes, I was and remain a very strange and nerdy girl.

But even having read so much about these events, nothing prepared me for the visual brutality of watching it all play out in Chernobyl. The rupture of nature and humanity as it bumped up against the USSR’s restrictive state socialism was often physically painful to watch. The bodies ravaged by radiation poisoning gave The Walking Dead a run for its gruesome money, and the stomach-churning scenes of children playing in the ashes of the nuclear explosion as the reactor glows in the distance was almost too much to take. And that was just the first two episodes of Chernobyl. By episode four, with the “animal control” duty and the “biorobots” (aka humans) devastation I’ve actually been ruined for horror. I have seen some terrible things, but absolutely nothing compares with these five+ hours of Mazin’s dark vision.

And Chernobyl paints a social and political picture that is sadly far deeper than the horrific event itself. Because the USSR had positioned itself as the ultimate Communist state, their propaganda machines went straight to work undermining the reality of the situation. When nuclear physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) is conscripted to assist with the cleanup, he is told that asking questions about why this happened is un-patriotic. Since nearby Pripyat was the poster city for Communist excellence, the man in charge of cleanup Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgard) says, “The official position of The State is that a global nuclear catastrophe is not possible in the Soviet Union.” Their misinformation attempted to bend the truth to their desired narrative. But as always, the truth eventually prevailed. It just took decades for it to happen.

Arguably one of the most striking things about Chernobyl is its sly call-out of the current American political regime through the lens of the fallen Soviet Republic. The irony isn’t lost on anyone that the forbear of the country who meddled in an American election in 2016 would be made up of the very kinds of incompetent and self-serving people we see in power in America today. The USSR’s anti-intellectualism platform demoted qualified and educated civil servants and replaced them with everyday Vladimirs whose only credentials were that they had been chosen to follow orders. This intelligence gap is exposed time and time again as Legasov and his comrades try to clean up the planet-altering mess made by people who were incapable of admitting they didn’t know what they were doing. Due to this gross negligence, the human and environmental toll was astronomical. Chernobyl still has dangerous levels of radiation present, all these decades later.

In the show the character of Belarusian nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) is actually a composite of Legasov’s team, a fact revealed in the closing titles of this gripping miniseries. Since there were several women on the team, I really appreciated the composite character being a woman too.

Watching Watson, Skarsgard, and Harris in their scenes together sometimes felt like a play. It was often too close to real, which only made the reality of the Chernobyl disaster more dramatic. The supporting cast as well put their all into these brutal performances. There was not even an extra who was remotely out of character. They attacked this story with the same kind of grim resolve the real folks would have done all those years ago. When I said I’ve never seen anything like this, I mean it down to the last people we see on screen. Mazin and his crew did something truly exceptional here. Elemental real-life disaster horror turned into a work of detailed art.

Chernobyl is the reminder we all need of why studying history and the humanities is so vital to human survival and civilization. Otherwise history continues to repeat itself. This is a narrative about what happens when mediocre, unintelligent, unqualified, power-hungry and anti-intellectual men rise to leadership roles they don’t deserve by a long shot. Sound familiar? We have a new scourge of right-wing extremists in the West who also pride themselves on their anti-intellectualism. And wealthy conservatives who encourage this ethos. Because the proletariat — the everyday Joes —  will make different decisions when they are ignorant of choices or lack critical thinking skills. They are far easier to manipulate, rob, and incite to violence if it doesn’t occur to them to question or speak back to power. Chernobyl is a terrifying vision of the things that petty people will do to stay in power at whatever human cost it might be.

Over 600,000 conscripted men were sent to Chernobyl to assist in the cleanup. It’s chilling that the Soviet Union made no records of these men’s fates, even though we well know that they all died before their time. Sooner or later. And it took Legasov’s suicide to release the tapes of his memoirs, which finally prompted the USSR to fix the original problem in all the reactors in the USSR that had caused the blast in Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4. More than two years after the event itself. Party over country. Crew expendable.

In his closing statements at the show trial of the men where blame was ultimately placed, Legasov says:

“We’re on dangerous ground right now. Because of our secrets and our lies. They’re practically what defines us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. It is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”

Seeing the parallels between what happened in Chernobyl through Mazin’s show — even though he has taken some creative liberties in the narrative — and the slow-motion disaster we’re seeing unfold under the current American political regime, I pray to the old gods and the new every day that Legasov via Jared Harris is right. The world cannot survive another Chernobyl. More importantly, we shouldn’t have to.

The post Review: HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ is Devastatingly Relevant to the World We Live in Now appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

One of the year’s biggest surprises for superhero movies has been Shazam! The latest shockingly great entry in DC’s recovering cinematic universe did a pretty perfect job on delivering the enjoyable adolescent power […]

The post ‘Shazam’ Spin-Off ‘Black Adam,’ Starring The Rock, Finds Its Director appeared first on Geek.com.

“If you loved her in the Walking Dead, you’ll love her in Swamp Thing.” That could be the slogan for Jeryl Prescott’s publicity billboard.

Prescott also may be familiar to readers as Cherry in Ray Donovan or Mama Cecile in The Skeleton Key or in slew of guest spots including Modern Family, Castle, Hawthorne, Parks and Recreation, etc.

That said, she’s hoping that fans will like DC Universe’s new streaming version of the classic comic (debuted May 31). For those who didn’t catch this comic back in the day, Swamp Thing is the story of a woman who discovers what she thinks is a swamp virus in a small Louisiana town — but it turns out that this “virus” is a being. Prescott plays Madame Xanadu, a supernatural fortune-telling mystic.

How much did you know about the origin of Swamp Thing?

I had heard of the name Xanadu out of context. As you know, Xanadu is love and partying and joy. Anything else I knew from my teenage boys. They are my resident experts on all things Marvel and DC. They even pulled up a cartoon — I think it was an old episode of Batman where Xanadu makes a brief appearance.

There are the comic books and they made another movie back in the 1980s, which was kind of cheesy. This show looks like it’s going to be a little more serious. What are your thoughts on that?

We are trying to do something very unique in that they are combining horror with heroes. You don’t see that a lot in Marvel or in DC. It’s fascinating and intriguing. There’s romance. There’s gore. There’s family drama. It’s really layered and very colorful.

Swamp Thing is a superhero but very different. He is defending his territory. How do you think audiences will respond to him?

It seems like a contradiction, but he is a monster and a romantic hero at the same time. In a way, he’s this character that you are drawn to. This man aims to protect this woman, who he sees as being in danger. He aims to protect her. In that way, he’s attractive.

At the same time, he’s the monstrous, colored-in-green stuff that you would think would be very unattractive.

In that way, the show is doing something fantastic. Of course, we’ve had these “beauty and the beast” scenarios before with King Kong, but this [show] is very intimate. Some of the teasers show the woman’s head right beside his head turning to look at him.

It’s fascinating the way romance works. It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. He’s irresistible, but at the same time, he scares the hell out of you.

Tell about your character, Xanadu.

In my mind, she is wild. She is certainly more than just a tarot card reader. She is the keeper of this community’s history and the keeper of their conscience. She also knows much more than she thinks people can stand to know.

The kind of truths that [Xanadu] harbors are truths that she thinks they need to grow more to be able to handle. She is maternal and feels that she knows things that they are too young to handle. Remember, she is over 2,000 years old.

She gives them as much as they can stand, and sometimes holding onto these truths is a bit of a challenge for her.

How long does it take you in makeup each day?

It is such a village effort to get Madame Xanadu ready! The makeup chair is a couple of hours, and then the hair included getting a braider, sometimes even before I got to North Carolina.

After I got to set, I had wonderful prop masters who helped give Xanadu everything she needed, including some spectacular canes, just some really cool stuff — even my eyeglasses.

Our costume designer is also pretty awesome. Her name is Ms. Emmy [Holmes]. She and her team rocked Xanadu out in a way that is different than we see in the comic strip. [In the comic strip], we see a lot of lingerie-looking clothes for Xanadu. What they wanted to do for her [in the show] is a bit different. I think, a bit more fierce.  

My main makeup guys were Jeff Goodwin and Jason Willis, who did all the prosthetics for the scars and the tattoos. These guys were all awesome and creative and perfectionists.

You’ve got a huge cast including Jennifer Beals, Virginia Madsen, and Ian Ziering. What’s it like working with them?

They are awesome and professional folk who have the best sense of humor. That’s what makes working fun and not feel like work.

Virginia: I just love her so much. I love her spirit and her badassness. Ian: I had a wonderful time working with him. I did scenes with both of them. I didn’t have any scenes with Jennifer, but everyone talks about how very lovely she is to work with. I didn’t get a chance to spend a lot of time with her.

We all had quite a good time after work, too; lots of eating because we were in North Carolina. We had a good time eating and drinking and just enjoying each other’s spirits.  

What part of North Carolina?

Wilmington. I’d worked down there on a couple of projects before. The crew there was just spectacular. We enjoyed a lot of Southern hospitality.

What other projects do you have in the works?

High Flying Bird you can still see on Netflix. It’s Andre Holland from Moonlight and [Steven] Soderbergh; what a brilliant combination they make. It speaks to the power of relationships between NBA players and NBA owners. It’s an attempt to wrestle away some of that power.

Some people see that as somewhat of an allegory, like Soderbergh’s efforts to wrestle away some of the power from the powers that be in the film industry. He’s always been considered somewhat of a rebel or renegade in the way he tries to do independents. He shot the movie on his iPhone. Yeah, for real, a couple of iPhones.

The young, lovely Ms. Zazie Beetz is in it, and Bill Duke is hilarious and fabulous, too. Sonja Sohn [The Wire] is also in it. I loved every minute working on that. High Flying Bird is a joy, and I hope more people will keep watching it.

People know you from The Walking Dead. Do they still come up to you when they see you?

What a joy and a blessing this show has been in my life. We have the most dedicated, loyal fans ever. I know there is a lot of talk about Game of Thrones, but I’ve never seen fans so kind as they are for The Walking Dead.  

I still have people who come up and hug me and spend a moment in grief for my character Jacqui, who died at the end of Season 1. It happens all the time and is the sweetest thing.

It encourages me as an actress to keep reaching for something deeper so people will be connected and affected by my work. I still stay in touch with a lot of castmates and, for me, there is a lot of joy around that.

Today it was announced that Swamp Thing has been canceled after one season.

The post Jeryl Prescott on the New DC Series, ‘Swamp Thing’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.