CULTURE

Hulu’s Fall Lineup Includes ‘Woke’ and Season 2 of ‘Pen15’

Hulu | Woke

Hulu’s strategy to bring diversity and laughs this fall may be the decision we all need to brighten our day.

In the TV show Woke, we are greeted with a familiar face, Lamorne Morris from New Girl, as he plays Keef Knight in a show that couldn’t be more timely. Keef Knight is a famous cartoonist who is well known, except some people don’t know he’s black. He’s someone who doesn’t see or feel his race as an important part of his identity, at least until he’s racially profiled by the police as a criminal suspect. After his very intense and scary encounter, his world changed in a way he could never expect—his cartoons come to life. In this way, he becomes ‘woke’ as he begins to see how the color of his skin affects his everyday life.

Woke promises to deliver comedy and heart while also sneaking in lessons about race, privilege, and equality that aren’t hard to understand and empathize with. If that’s not enough to entice you, it’s also based on a true story.

Pen15 is a TV show that returns us to the nostalgia of our middle school days, complete with all the cliches of the early 2000s. The first season introduced us to Maya and Anna, two best friends who are thirteen in the show, yet they are played by actors who are in their thirties. This is intentional. The series creators wanted to imagine going back to middle school as their adult selves, remembering all the horrible, traumatizing, and downright embarrassing things that happened to them. The first season was chock full of the usual middle school melodrama: boy crushes, bullying, sexuality, divorce, peer pressure, and of course the dangers of the internet.

The second season continues to explore certain events from the first season, but this time there’s magic!

In an ever-changing world where uncertainty is constant, laughter and escapism are always a good antidote so check out these shows on Hulu. You can find all the new shows coming to the streaming platform this fall on their website