Friday Freestyles... The Underground Edition

Friday!

And it's a 3 day weekend coming up.

Man listen... if it was a payday, this would be a perfect holiday. Perfect.

Yet it is not. And I'm thankful for a Friday.

We get to leave an hour early today. Um... seems like some folk have a liberal interpretation of leave an hour early, where one hour is more like one hour and 53 minutes.

I myself am busting up out of here early anyway. I made sure of that, as I have an haircut appointment at 5:00 pm.

Yes I do! So peace out to this place.

I initially thought of just heading out with the throngs of people who got out of dodge early, as it is like a herd of cattle heading for the hills. I would have just been one more cattle in the herd. That would have been easy enough. And my boss has been out since Wednesday. That gives me freedom to get all caught up in all amounts of tomfoolery.

Now, I never put down the full amount of hours worked. That way, if I need to leave early or just leave and run a few errands in the middle of the day, I can do that. This seems to happen once every couple of months. And that's all good.

Any, enough ponderings and freestyles about leaving the workplace...

Have you watched the series Underground?

Oh my goodness. I will say right now that this series is HANDS DOWN the BEST thing I have EVER seen on TV. Ever.

Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

It is the story, a fictional recounting of course, of the forming and the meaning of the Underground railroad. Specifically, it's about abolitionists, slave trappers, masters and their issues...

And Slaves trying to get the HELL on. Period.

"We tryna raise up outta here right NOW!!"

This drama series had me on the edge of my seat. Literally. It had me crying, screaming, cheering. I do believe I experienced every emotion, some that I didn't even know of.

Now, I'd heard about The Underground Railroad all while I was in school. Most notably, I heard about Harriet Tubman. And honestly, I wasn't going to even watch it, as I didn't care to see the Harriet Tubman story (yes, this is wrong of me, I know). But one of my favorite radio talk show hosts, Karen Hunter, was going on and on and on about it, so I went looking for it. It was on an obscure station that I don't get. So I bought the series off of Amazon Prime. Best $15 I have ever spent hands down.

I watched one episode while eating dinner one night after work. I figured I would just check it out.

I was up until 2:00 am watching the other episodes (knowing good and well I had to go to work the next day. Sigh). It was only 6 or 7 episodes in at the time, so I watched ALL of it.

It is NOT the Harriet Tubman story, but it made it easy to see how all of that jumped off. Really.

What I like about this story is what I usually like about my favorite stories: there are a ton of characters with a ton of storylines. All of them were nicely woven together. The Underground Railroad issues were woven well together with everyone's personal issues.

I think these two promotional posters do a good job of expressing the emotional tones of the characters.

I think there were twice as many characters as shown above. And I either hated them, wondered about them, or cared about them all in some way or another. It really yanked at my emotions.

With all the characters, it was fast paced and much to keep up with. That was the only drawback. This was a 10 episode series, but it could have EASILY been the standard 22 episode series. But they covered much ground and set the show up nicely for the second season.

Hooray!

I won't go on and on. Just trust me, this was GREAT. I know some don't like anything to do with slavery. I don't care much either. But this was on some other level.

My coworker loves the Color Purple. I told her to watch this because it was Color Purple on speed.

She is caucasian, and she said she could see why a lot of black folk don't like white folk.

Yes, watching that make you go O_o.

And some of that hate was going on in  the movie. Even when the abolitionists were trying to help slaves, there was some conflict involved in that from the slaves point of view. 

I know black folk who get all shook up when they drive pass a cotton field. I understand why now. (Plus I have read a lot about behavioral epigenetics. Someone in your background has picked a lot of cotton, and this is imprinted somewhere in your genetic material, and it effects you emotionally. I thought much about that while watching this. I understand that now.)

Anyway, this was GREAT. I have watched it 3 times. Gonna watch it again.

Oh... Here is the trailer...



Yeah... the music was interesting. Done by Kanye. Very hip-hoppish. Threw me off for a minute, but it added to the urgency of the show.

Underground was produced by John Legend. Great job, sir. Superb!!

It comes out on Netflix next month. I have netflix on my smartphone. This is good, because I can watch it on my phone... 

Yes, I will be watching it again. Maybe this holiday weekend? I don't know. We will see.

But I know one thing.

I will have a great weekend on purpose.

You do the same!