On My Block – Review

Cast: Diego Tinoco, Jason Genao, Jessica Marie Garcia, Ronni Hawk, Sierra Capri, Brett Gray
Genre: Comedy-drama, Coming-of-Age Fiction
Co-created by Lauren Iungerich (creator of MTV’s Awkward), Jeremy Haft and Eddie Gonzalez (both writers for the All Eyez On Me biopic, as well as on Empire), On My Block follows four fourteen-year-olds in a majorly Black and Latin neighborhood in Los Angeles.
The series opens with protagonists Monse, Ruby, Jamal and Cesar, a mixed group of Latino and black teens preparing for their first year in high school. Their typical adolescent anxieties are outweighed by a greater fear – that Cesar’s membership in a local gang known as Los Santos threatens to ruin his academic career altogether. The four main kids are all complex and adorable, and don’t play into negative stereotypes.
Most of the teen shows portray kids from wealthy or middle-class families but On My Block focuses on the kids that are living in rough communities without showing them as violent. This series does a good job portraying what life in a lower income area is really like, touching on an important issue, which is gang violence and does it with such charisma and spontaneity. The series is funny because it embraces even inner city kids laughing at their own pain.
While normal coming-of-age topics like discovering one’s sexuality and testing one’s friendships find a place in On My Block, what makes it special is that it almost always dives into the specific issues of the kids’ environment. And it never loses it color-awareness: “We’re brown! Only white kids find treasure,” Monse tells Jamal. But it’s not just the well-executed racial representation that sets the show apart. These teenagers are realistic, always written with depth and respect.
The series manages to balance the comedy and optimism of childhood with the violence and drama of a world where shootouts are an everyday occurrence, where high school kids are pulled into the gang life. It is pretty hard to switch off after three or four episodes as it heads to a shocking finale.
> Mar Martínez