Plot - Ricky "Gogo" Gomez has been kicked off the basketball team due to poor grades and then falls back into hanging out with his old gang called "The Aztecs" who speak a blend of Spanish and accented English. Enter Coach Reeves. Reeves is visibly upset by the decision and goes about uncovering clues and fighting for Gomez throughout the episode.
Gomez is seemingly one of the only Hispanics at the school. He struggles to read books such as Little Women and understand the nomenclature of biology class. Reeves fights on two fronts to restore Gomez to Carver and the team: one of getting him safely away from the Aztecs and the other to fight the Carver administration and faculty to cater more to Gomez. It works and at the end everyone is happy.
Observations - This is an interesting look at multi-culturalism and takes us away from simple black and white as the show is sometimes viewed. Gomez is proud of his Mexican heritage.
Reeves and an LA detective spend some time driving around LA at night looking for a "rumble" that Gomez was a part of. Some of the exteriors were reminiscent of "Grease" and others of The Terminator movies.
The Mexican actors were not very convincing. First, Gomez' mother made a terrible grammatical error when speaking to Reeves through an interpreter. Second, the Aztecs actors didn't look Mexican or menacing at all for that matter.
I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt as this is not the White Shadow's strength, and the producers and writers were willing to go out of their comfort zone to try to create a compelling episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment