Bronzeville Season Two

The second season of Bronzeville takes what worked with season one and amps the story portion up to a 2000s Scorcese film level of quality.

A Non-Linear The Departed with a Black Cast

The vibe this story gives off is The Departed meets Pulp Fiction. It has all the engagement of the former and the episodic nature of the latter that all come together in a nice bow at the end.

Bronzeville season two follows three main characters and their storylines involving the fallout from season one. A lot of what happened in that arc didn’t ring any bells. Even with a recap at the beginning of the season, this felt like a new show I was listening to for the first time.

Law and Order: Jim Crow

Like season one, Bronzeville both chronicles the lives of Black Chicago and tells an episodic story. That storyline is a bit like an episode of Law and Order with an A and B plot, meshed together with a season-long arc that doesn’t hit you until an episode or two before the finale.

At seven podcast episodes (with the first being a two-parter), it takes a while to get to the best engaging part of the season. For me, that’s the actual trial scene. After listening to the beginning a second time, a lot of the story came together nicely. On my first listen, the standout plot threads—in order of interest—were the trial of Henry Davis, Jimmy Tillman and Lisa Copeland’s romance with a separate arc for each of them, and the conversations involving Lawrence Fishburne’s Curtis “Eyeball” Randolph.

The plan itself feels pretty disingenuous in the world of Bronzeville. It’s even slyer the way the writers pull a Glass Onion where the reveal is hinted at throughout as early as the first episode. At least, I think that’s what happened.

Comparing this season with the previous and there’s a big difference between them. That is the absence of or any mention of communism. In some ways, this feels like a mini-series one might find on Netflix or the BBC.

Bronzeville Season Two – A Tale of Two Chicagos

After a white landlord is murdered by a black tenant, the two worlds of Chicago might collide. Both groups are caught between a proverbial rock and a hard place. If the defendant is found not guilty, the outrage from whites would mean bad news for the Black population. The same thing could happen, but on the other side of the Black/white race divide.

White people have the power and influence to make good on threats. The Black population of Bronzeville, by contrast. would have to fight an uphill battle. Which outcome is the lesser of two evils in a utilitarian sense is lightly debated by the people with influence in the story. Much like we see in today’s systemic violence against blacks, there’s no lesser of two equal evils here. It’s one more powerful evil and one less powerful one. The end result of their conflict being the proverbial annihilation of the weaker power. To even the playing field, radical change is often needed.

8.5/10- Stars

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