Grown-Ish: Black-ish Goes to College, and Meets Bisexuals

The sitcom Grown-ish (2018-) a spinoff of Black-ish, sends Zoe (Yara Shahidi) off to the mostly black-ish Cal University (shades of A Different World), where she makes an ethnically diverse group of friends, or as she calls them, "six losers who I normally never would have even spoke to."

1. The "woke" Aaron Jackson (Trevor Jackson)

2. The bisexual Jewish Nomi.

3. The Gujarati drug-dealing hunk-ish Vivek (Jordan Buhat)

4. The femme-ish stoner Luca (Luka Sabbat).

5-6. Sky and Jazz, twin track stars.


Zoe also bonds with her roommate, a conservative-ish Republican Catholic (but not homophobic) who feels harassed on the liberal campus and wants a "safe space" like the gays get.

There are plenty of other hunks around, like Diggy Simmons as Jazz's boyfriend.

And Deon Cole (left) as a business-ish professor of drones.

Episodes involve the standard classes, career aspirations, and romantic entanglements of the main characters, and of course especially Zoey, who juggles several guys before finally trying to decide between Aaron and Luca.

No gay characters, but an interesting story arc deals with biphobia, Nomi is with a female date when Big Dave (Barrett Carnahan) approaches to act flirt-ish with her.  She rebuffs him, but tells her date that she is bisexual, whereupon the woman becomes angry-ish, says she is not interested in being an "experiment," and tells her to call when she is over her "bisexual phase."

Nomi points out that it's not a phase, but the date still storms off in anger.

Cut to the righteous indignation. Nomi and her friends decide to hang out with Big Dave after all.

He states it's no big deal.  He's fooled around with guys, but that doesn't make him gay, right?

Um..double-takes.  Shock.

"I'm bi," he concludes.  Shock.  Everyone is uncomfortable-ish.  Even Nomi.

They get that bisexuality is not a phase -- with women.  But bisexual men?  Aren't they just fooling themselves?  Aren't they really just...gay?

Nomi starts to date him anyway, but by the next episode they've broken up.  She couldn't take it.  "I can't help feel it's different for guys and girls."

Even bisexuals can be biphobic-ish.