Throughout its eight-season run on ABC, Black-ish touched on all kinds of sensitive topics, from postpartum depression to racial slurs to police brutality. However, one Season 4 episode was shelved for years, reportedly for being too politically charged. After butting heads with the network over the subject matter, series creator Kenya Barris reached a mutual agreement with them not to air the show in question. Entitled “Please, Baby, Please,” it was originally scheduled to air on February 27, 2018, but was replaced by a rerun.
So what was all the fuss about, you ask? Well, according to reports from back then, the story revolves around Dre, played by Anthony Anderson, having to take care of his infant son during a thunderstorm. At one point, he improvises a bedtime story that conveys his concerns about the state of the country. Dre also gets into an argument with his son, Junior (Marcus Scribner), in one scene about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem.
8 Years Ago, ABC Shelved This Black-ish Episode for Being Too Controversial. It Finally Came Out Years Later
The dispute over the unaired episode ultimately led Barris to step away from ABC Studios and sign a deal with Netflix. In response to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Barris went back to ABC to ask them to reconsider their decision. “Please, Baby, Please” was finally added to the Black-ish collection on Hulu on August 10, 2020, more than two years after it was slated to make its TV debut on ABC. Despite concerns over upsetting conservative viewers, the episode’s eventual release doesn’t appear to have sparked any significant controversy.
“We were one year post-election and coming to the end of a year that left us, like many Americans, grappling with the state of our country and anxious about its future,” Barris wrote on Instagram at the time. “Those feelings poured onto the page, becoming 22 minutes of television that I was, and still am, incredibly proud of. ‘Please, Baby, Please’ didn’t make it to air that season and, while much has been speculated about its contents, the episode has never been seen publicly…until now.”
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