WOKE Season 1: Lamorne Morris Is Excellent In This Surreal Comedy About Race

Racism is not — and has never been, I might add — a laughing matter. But it doesn’t mean that addressing it using comedy is an impossible thing to do. Keith Knight certainly has proven that statement. Part cartoonist and part activist, Keith has been using his art to tackle some serious topics revolving around race relations. Even in some of his comics, he unapologetically challenges us to talk about police brutality. But what’s fascinating about him is how, even when the subjects he tackles are serious, Keith always finds a way to keep things hilarious and light-hearted without sacrificing the essence of the story that he’s trying to tell.

His latest creation Woke, Hulu’s newest comedy starring Lamorne Morris which Keith co-created with Marshall Todd, continues his tradition of using surreal comedy to boldly explore the issue of racism. And as you can probably guess from the title, the show centers its story around wokeness, in particular, the journey of a Black cartoonist grappling with the question of what it actually means to be woke. But that’s just what the show is from the surface. Deep down, Woke also dives deep into a lot more interesting subjects such as identity, allyship, and trauma. And it’s an excellent one at juggling all those topics.

Being Newly Woke

Loosely inspired by the real incident that happened to Keith a few years ago, Woke focuses on the life of a Black cartoonist named Keef Knight (Morris). He is on the verge of mainstream success when we first meet him; his comic, which he names “Toast and Butter,” is gonna get published real soon. And he’s clearly about to become the next big cartoonist. But an unexpected incident involving police that happens to Keef while he’s promoting his art on the street of San Francisco suddenly turns his life and worldview upside down.

Everywhere he goes, he sees everyday objects — from his own cartoon characters and his pen to malt liquor bottles and a trash bin — come to life and provoke him about the incident throughout the days. And obviously, it drives him nuts. But Keef thinks that what happens to him since the incident is just a product of his own imagination and that it will stop sooner, which of course, is not the case. The talking objects just keep getting wilder and more confrontational each day, and once he cannot contain his frustration any longer, he lashes out on the stage of the day his press junkets begin, which results in him getting dropped by the company that’s supposed to publish his comic in the first place.

What happens after is where the season gets pretty interesting. We follow Keef throughout eight episodes as he’s trying to put his emerging wokeness into good use; as he’s trying to navigate the same world but with a new set of perspective; as he’s meditating his identity as a Black cartoonist. And it’s clear, that through all these journeys and dilemmas that Keef is having, Woke wants to wrestle with the reality of being woke in the social media era, in particular, about the difference of being a Black artist and an artist who happens to be Black.

This is, of course, a very complicated topic to explore, and one that’s even harder to fully comprehend. Woke, however, never tries to answer all of the questions it’s asking. Rather, what the show offers here is the multilayered perspective of all the topics surrounding wokeness itself; how in an era where the line of being sincerely woke and performative is blurry, walking around these issues can get a little tricky. But that’s exactly what makes Woke all the more remarkable. It doesn’t simplify things. What it does is just present the truth and the complexities revolving around the subjects it’s trying to tackle. And while doing so, it entertains us with plenty of memorable jokes, an inventive visual, and solid performances from the cast.

As Keef, Morris is simply outstanding. He is both charismatic and hilarious; charming and confident. And his comedic timing is impeccable too. But at the same time, he’s also able to display the traumatized side of Keef without overdoing it. Morris actually has always been great (we can see how excellent he was in New Girl and Game Night) but his performance in Woke is just on another level, with equally solid performances from the supporting cast — particularly Blake Anderson as Guther, T. Murph as Clovis, and Sasheer Zamata as Ayana — elevating that high even more.

On Allyship & Police Brutality

While Keef’s journey of being woke is what Woke largely focuses on, the show also touches other timely subjects throughout eight episodes, which is mostly done by exploring the other characters outside of him. Take, for instance, Keef’s girlfriend Adrienne (Rose McIver) and roommate Gunther, the only two major white characters in the show. Using these two characters’ relationships with Keef, Woke brilliantly examines the complexities of allyship between races. Is not talking about race when non-Black people are on a relationship with Black people can be considered support? That’s just one of the questions that the show inscribes.

Woke smartly provides an answer to that question while still leaving the audience enough to think about. In the last two episodes alone, the show offers plenty of insight into this matter of allyship. But it’s the season finale where the show is at its absolute best. Titled “Blue Lies Matter,” the eighth episode of Woke reverts back to what drives Keef’s journey in the first place: the incident of police brutality that has since changed how he sees his art and the world he lives in. In it, Keef is asked by the city police, who tells him that they want to make things better, to attend a public event where he and the officer who assaulted him have a talk over beers, which he reluctantly accepts.

However, once he arrives at the location, he can sense that this is just a stunt; a performative act from the police to make them look better in front of the press. The officer who’s responsible for Keef’s trauma — in an unsubtle move by the show’s writers is named Officer White — does not seem sincere at all when he’s apologizing to Keef. In fact, once there are only two of them in the room, this officer confesses that he is indeed just doing what his superior tells him for the sake of the police reputation, and actually has no regret over what he did to Keef.

What the show wants us to understand from the season finale, especially from the whole scene between Keef and Officer White, is how oftentimes when we see police officers offer sympathy toward Black people, it doesn’t always mean that they’re being sincere about it; it can just be a performance. This part, in particular, feels timelier than over at the moment. We see this stunt all over the internet, but as what the show has demonstrated, we shouldn’t easily trust what our eyes witness.

Final Thought

Woke is filled with so many messages like the one above, and it’s aware of all that. But never once does it end up feeling preachy. If anything, its self-awareness of the things it makes fun of, along with the light and hilarious tone it maintains until the very end, is what makes the show such a rare knockout. Safe to say that it’s one of the best new shows of the year. Make sure to not miss this when it comes out!

What do you think will happen to Keef at the end of the season? Let us know in the comments below!

All eight episodes of Woke season one will drop September 9, 2020 on Hulu.

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