ABC Pulling a ‘Black-Ish’ Episode Only Gave it More Power (Column)

https://variety.com/2020/tv/columns/blackish-please-baby-please-review-1234731046/

The most surefire way to make people interested in a product is to ban it from circulation. ABC found this out the hard way in 2018 when it pulled an episode of “Black-ish” from its schedule less than a week before it was due to air, which all but guaranteed that it would become the stuff of TV industry legend. “Black-ish,” from creator Kenya Barris, had already tackled plenty of “hot button issues” before. This particular episode — written by Barris and Peter Saji — supposedly contained more concentrated anti-Trump material than most, and after the 2016 election, ABC was going through a very public attempt to court conservative viewers. (Remember the “Roseanne” reboot? Neither do I.) Still, the idea that the network would spend so much time, energy and money on this episode, only to decide it wasn’t worth airing at all, made “Please, Baby, Please” a more fascinating chapter ...