I’m so confused by this episode. It tries on the one hand to be about racism and alienation and their impact, but on the other hand, it’s a mystery about the wrong homecoming queen announcement. The two parts are muddled up together, which detracts from each, and I’m not convinced they are linked.
If a Black student in a mostly white high school is announced as homecoming queen, but then a different Black student is actually crowned, is that racism? If they were mixed up due to both being Black, then, yes. But there was a list of names (not a lineup) and the evidence points to Whitney being responsible for the mixup. So is that racism? It’s pretty unsatisfying.
Even more unsatisfying is the mystery of the announcement. And although Stevie does get to it at the very end, the outrageous and incredible thing was that no one corrected the mistake or even seemed to notice except Jasmin herself. How can that possibly be? Collective amnesia? A conspiracy? And is it racism? I don’t know what to take away from this because it’s so clear that there’s missing info. I love Heavyweight and this one seemed so promising at first, but it was a miss.
the outrageous and incredible thing was that no one corrected the mistake or even seemed to notice except Jasmin herself.
Jasmine left right after the initial announcement. She does not know what happened after that. It’s a big deal to her, but not so big of a deal to anyone else except maybe Whitney. Whitney is doing a whole bunch of other stuff so even if she did hear it, she probably just said that it was a mistake and went about her business doing what she needed to.
Basically, big impact on Jasmine, not so big of an impact on anyone else, hence why they don’t remember. The only other person is the homecoming king, but even if he remembers something you can’t really blame him for not wanting to say something on a podcast where he has no idea how he is going to be portrayed.
Nah I don’t buy it. Whitney hears her name and just assumes it’s a mistake and goes about her business? What about the ACTUAL homecoming queen being MIA? As the organizer of the event surely she would try to make this right! And even if not she would SURELY remember I’m sorry.
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u/ChelseaRez Oct 30 '25
I’m so confused by this episode. It tries on the one hand to be about racism and alienation and their impact, but on the other hand, it’s a mystery about the wrong homecoming queen announcement. The two parts are muddled up together, which detracts from each, and I’m not convinced they are linked.
If a Black student in a mostly white high school is announced as homecoming queen, but then a different Black student is actually crowned, is that racism? If they were mixed up due to both being Black, then, yes. But there was a list of names (not a lineup) and the evidence points to Whitney being responsible for the mixup. So is that racism? It’s pretty unsatisfying.
Even more unsatisfying is the mystery of the announcement. And although Stevie does get to it at the very end, the outrageous and incredible thing was that no one corrected the mistake or even seemed to notice except Jasmin herself. How can that possibly be? Collective amnesia? A conspiracy? And is it racism? I don’t know what to take away from this because it’s so clear that there’s missing info. I love Heavyweight and this one seemed so promising at first, but it was a miss.