'Black-ish' confronts police brutality in new episode

Police brutality isn't standard sitcom fare.

Nor is it treated as such in Wednesday's episode of ABC comedy Black-ish (9:30 p.m. ET/PT), which centers on an affluent African-American family living in a mostly white neighborhood.

The episode, titled "Hope," doesn't chase headlines so much as it explores how parents often struggle to talk to their kids about life's thornier issues — in this case, a fictional news story about an unarmed black teenager selling DVDs who is tased dozens of times by a cop.

The episode was inspired by a real-life predicament that creator Kenya Barris faced in late 2014, watching the news with his family when riots broke out in Ferguson, Mo., after police officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

"My second-youngest son looked up and said, 'Why are all these people so mad?' " Barris says. "I wanted to say something super inflammatory and my wife felt like she understood where I was coming from. But at the same time, she was like, 'How can you tell our kids that? They still have to live in this world and haven't had your experiences.' "

"Hope" is set almost entirely in the family's living room, as three generations sit around the TV and watch a verdict come in. Anthony Anderson, who plays outspoken patriarch Andre "Dre" Johnson, compares the episode's claustrophobic setting to that of 12 Angry Men, as Dre and his wife, Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross), argue over how much to tell their two youngest children.

"It was different than any other episode that we shot," says Anderson, adding that he was a victim of police brutality on two separate occasions as a teenager. "It was really more like a play, and we got to exercise different muscles as an actor than we normally do."

While the sitcom doesn't make light of police brutality, it does find humor in how the family reacts to the situation. Grandma Ruby (Jenifer Lewis) stockpiles supplies in case of riots, while the kids debate the merits of Trainwreck and Chi-Raq, the movies the teen was holding when he was tased.

It's not the first time Black-ish has waded into potentially controversial terrain. Aside from addressing black stereotypes in many episodes, the series has featured discussions about the acceptability of the N-word and whether Dre needs a gun to protect his family. .

After laying groundwork last year, Anderson says the show can more easily explore topical, weightier themes in its second season.

"We wanted to establish the show and the point of view of the characters, so when we did tackle these subjects in the next season, you understood why we were doing it," Anderson says. "You had a sense of Dre and could be like, 'OK, this is something Dre would talk about and this is why he would feel so adamant about it.' "

Still, reaction to Wednesday's episode weighs on Barris.

"I'm very nervous about it," he says. "It's not a comedic topic. The conceit of it does not come from a comedic place." In a larger sense, "I want people to not extract anything from this other than the notion that we want to start positive conversations and be funny."