On My Block debuted its petite first season of ten episodes in March 2018 and proceeded to become one of the most binged Netflix series of the entire year. I personally slurped up the entire season in the first two days of my last summer vacation (the total runtime is only about 5 hours), and I have been lingering around the block for a new trailer ever since. Earning the Teen Choice Award for Choice Breakout Award, the show was picked up for a second season just weeks after its initial release. Throughout the course of the year, I’ve wondering periodically when the tragicomic would finally make its fated return (especially since the concluding episode was emotionally unsettling and quite difficult to process).
Precariously straddling the boundary between genres, On My Block is often understood as a “coming-of-age” saga of four high school students living in South Central Los Angeles. I think it’s peculiar to collapse the socio-economic nuances of the show into the prescriptive paradigm of the adolescent narrative. Monse, Ruby, Jamal and Cesar have to deal with a lot more than just the awkward and uncomfortable process of growing into their bodies and developing mature interpersonal relationships. Cesar is recruited into his older brother’s neighborhood gang, imbuing the “normalcy” of their everyday lives with gun violence, crime and severe moral complexes. Jamal’s helpless pursuit of a buried fortune from an ’80s roller-rink heist taps into the economic desperation of the local community, where illegal activity and get-rich-quick methods seem to be the only vehicles to uplift.
Their conflicts are not limited to teen angst and internal identity struggles; Monse, Ruby, Jamal and Cesar’s personal growth is posteriorly accelerated while they are forced to face the real-world, institutionalized struggle of the educational and economical inequality that is uninvited yet native to the streets of Compton, Paramount, Inglewood, Florence, Watts, and East Los Angeles. All while keeping jokes funny and frequent, On My Block challenges the happy, go-lucky archetype of the American sitcom and reminds us that this country is full of a wide variety of nuanced experiences, many of which are unfair and frightening but accepted as normal. If you haven’t watched season one, you have some homework to catch up on! Especially since I’m about to leak some spoilers with this season two tea.
A few months ago, I spotted an Instagram Live video with Julio Macias and Diego Tinoco, the actors who play the dynamic brother duo of Cesar Diaz and Oscar ‘Spooky’ Diaz. As part of his image as the smoldering leader of the Santos gang, Oscar sports an iconic teardrop tattoo, a jet black wife beater and a tightly shaved head. Macias had grown his hair back during the off-season, but Tinoco shaved it for him on Instagram Live— which could only mean one thing. Filming for season two was about to begin!
I waited and waited and waited even longer, and I was beginning to doubt that creators, Jeremy Haft & Eddie Gonzalez & Lauren Iungerich, had even begun workshopping the second season in the conference room. What was going to happen with Ruby?! I had been dangling off that cliffhanger for so long, my noodle arms were growing fatigued.
And then, a close friend sent me a link to the cold opening of the second season and it is heavy.
The cold opening again taps into the paradox between normalcy and shocking tragedy, slowly transitioning between memorial after memorial. We are compelled to think about all the young people we have lost in this country to gun violence, how many times we have framed pictures and sewn ornate flowers along the border, how often government officials have expressed their condolences without making any legislative changes or progress.
Five days later, the official trailer dropped and there is a significant change in tone as the banter returns and the morose mourning of the cold opening fades into the peripherals. The cold opening and the trailer are like night and day, perhaps emphasizing the polarizing genre bending of the show and the alternating urges of both laughter and tears. Not to mention, there are two MAJOR spoiler alerts (Ruby is NOT dead and Jamal recovered the roller rink fortune?!)
Now that season two is out, it’s time to see where the show will go. What will Jamal do with the money? Will Cesar find his way out of the Santos? Where is Olivia?! As Ruby’s abuela says it best, bitches be bonkers.