How Netflix’s “Mo” Evades the Usual Representation Traps
Hollywood’s efforts to address its diversity issues have gone through some predictable but occasionally hilarious growing pains.
Random minorities are now popping up in all sorts of unexpected places, whether it be the boardrooms of American corporations,
rural police departments, or the fantastical landscapes that were once the ancestry of white actors with prosthetic ears.
Many of these efforts are commendable, if not always successful,
when it comes to doing anything other than bringing a few different shades to an IMDb page.
But they can also feel superficially, as if the show’s producers are just placating various people they hope won’t call them off on Twitter.
“Mo,” Netflix’s loosely autobiographical half-hour comedy based on the life of Mohammed Amer — a big, perpetually hurt, cocky comedic lead in the tradition of Jackie Gleason — checks a lot of diversity boxes.