'Black-ish' recap: 'Good Dre Hunting'

Black-ish takes a break from controversy, following the election episode "Lemons," to address the the less controversial topic of therapy in this week's episode titled "Good Dre Hunting." As usual, Dre and his wife Rainbow don't see eye to eye on the issue.

In the first scene, Dre muses on his tendency to respond to agitating circumstances with anger. Rainbow, who regularly attends therapy sessions, suggests that Dre take some too in order to deal with his anger problem. This elicits a sarcastic remark from Dre, who thinks there's no point in paying some $200 an hour to listen to him as he figures his problems out by himself. It's a seemingly astute observation, considering Rainbow's only response is therapy actually costs $180 an hour. However, as always, Dre quickly finds out he is wrong.

Meanwhile, the Johnson children are relegated with forgettable subplots. Zooey and Junior  start paying someone to be their life coach. Besides a couple funny moments, this subplot ends up being pointless. In the end, they realize their life coach is just part of a pyramid scheme that they are roped into. All the while twins Jack and Diane make plans for the perceived divorce of their parents. Another moot subplot. Yawn.

When Dre goes to the office he and his co-workers engage in their typical debate, this one about the usefulness of therapy. The deep stigmatization of therapy within the black community is  highlighted by the way Dre, Daphne and Curtis speak about it. On the other hand, their white co-workers, Mr. Stevens and Josh, espouse the merits of going to therapy sessions.

Afterwards, Dre goes on an unjustified tirade on the postman. Rainbow finally convinces him to take therapy sessions and she, in an attempt to prove her normalcy, vows to stop going to therapy. Dre injects humor into the therapy sessions with a running joke on the therapists "wig." Ultimately, Dre ends up benefiting from them. Unfortunately, Rainbow is provoked into a destructive outburst  by her sexist coworker and she realizes she needs her therapy sessions.

Useless subplots notwithstanding, this episode is entertaining. Moreover, it does a good job attempting to break down the stigmatization of going to therapy sessions.