The Big Payback
- Episode aired Apr 7, 2022
- TV-MA
- 36m
An office worker's world is turned upside down when he learns his past ancestors were slave owners.An office worker's world is turned upside down when he learns his past ancestors were slave owners.An office worker's world is turned upside down when he learns his past ancestors were slave owners.
- Earnest 'Earn' Marks
- (credit only)
- Alfred 'Paper Boi' Miles
- (credit only)
- Darius
- (credit only)
- Van
- (credit only)
- Willy
- (as D. James Jones)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaIn the United States, the idea of "Slave Reparations" goes all the way back to the post-Civil War era, namely to give each freed man "40 acres and a mule" to tend to farmland.
- Quotes
E: I have a feeling we're in the same boat Marshall. You owe a lot?
Marshall Johnson: This woman-- she... follows me everywhere, won't leave me alone.
[waitress brings his drink]
Marshall Johnson: Thanks.
Hotel Employee: You're welcome.
Marshall Johnson: Just... can't believe this is actually happening. Two days ago, I had a good life, and now I'm being fucked by some shit that I didn't even do. I'm losing my wife, my house, my daughter.
E: I don't know.
Marshall Johnson: Didn't fucking do anything.
E: [moves closer to Marshall, speaks quietly] As I was sayin', I don't know.
Marshall Johnson: What?
E: I don't know. My grandfather used to tell me how his father built everything we had from the ground up; pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, you know? Turns out, he didn't. Turns out he had a lot of help. And a lot of kids.
[laughs softly]
E: Maybe it's only right.
Marshall Johnson: E, we don't deserve this.
E: Well, what do they deserve? We were treating slavery as if it were a mystery, buried in the past, something to investigate if we chose to. And now that history has a monetary value. Confession is not absolution. And in the case of this person... What's her name?
Marshall Johnson: Sheniqua.
E: To Sheniqua, to them... slavery is not past. I mean, it's not a mystery. It is not an historical curiosity. It is a cruel, unavoidable ghost that haunts in a way we can't see. None of us are perfect. So now you're what? You're separated from your wife? She's taking your kid? Now she has to be raised without a father? She has to build wealth and success from the ground up, right? It's similar to the position we put them in. But we're gonna be okay. You daughter's gonna be okay. The curse has been lifted from her. All of us-- we were running from it, but now we're free.
[taps Marshall's leg]
E: Excuse me.
[stands and leaves]
- SoundtracksSay
Performed by Plastic Birds
That is precisely why this episode is so outstanding. Because it allowed me to let me feel something we are seldom allowed to feel anymore. Not on purpose anyway.
That feeling is a mix of guilt, of shame and of overall unpleasantness. It is a feeling of cringe and of dread. It is the feeling you get when a stranger starts yelling at their child in public without any reason. It is second hand shame. It is guilt by association.
The episode starts out by showing us a protagonist. He is our average middle class white guy. It might be a genius covert message the show smuggles in; for some reason your movie-goer brain immediately identifies with him. The episode's protagonist is a white guy, you're the white guy. Just a regular dude having normal day: going to work, picking his daughter at school. But very slowly, almost surreptitiously the episode presents a rather upsetting scenario. Basically what if Reparations where not only possible and real but also they were done in the most ludicrous and traumatizing manner. In other words it goes full Black Mirror.
In Black Mirror, each episode focused on some clever new tech or innovation. The inciting incident would always twist it cynically beyond recognition by its own internal logic and the show would end up in something truely dystopian. Equally funny and disgusting.
Here, the upsetting part comes from two elements; the character of Sheniqua Johnson (of the St. Louis Johnsons) who so obnoxious and just perfectly over the top, yet strangely familiar/recognizable. I know in my brain Sheniqua is played by an actress and she is not real. Yet I feel that I have met this kind of person, and the mere idea that she should be rewarded is upsetting. The second part is the fact that our protagonist guy is instantly trapped; there is no recourse, he has no lever of action, no way of getting out of this. He is declared guilty from the start, and it plays on our understanding that cancel culture in a way is neither impartial nor just. It is purely emotional response. When he encounters the mustached man (horror boat man from the first episode) at the hotel, their dialogue is strangely calming and soothing but also very dark and bleak. To the point where when he goes, you earnestly go "hey that is actually a good solution".
I admire the artistic commitment of this episode. The commitment to dragging the protagonist through the thick of it. But also the how it frames an inversion of the black experience. Yes the situation is ridiculous, but how ridiculous is the contemporary situation/status quo for black people.
It goes out to make you feel very negative emotions and it holds nothing back. The Ancient Greeks in their Drama were concerned with the concept of catharsis, which mean literally purging. The idea was to make you feel bad in fiction so you could live your life, for real, peacefully. This is this episode.
- Criticalstaff
- May 12, 2022
Details
- Runtime36 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.78 : 1