‘Black-ish’ Trolls American Girl Dolls (With Help From Casey Wilson)

Yahoo TV Staff

Never one to shy away from issues both serious (police brutality) and silly (baby names), this week black-ish tackles a problem that’s a little bit of both: The diversity of American Girl — excuse us, we mean Girl Story — dolls. In this week’s episode “ToysRn’tUs,” Diane (Marsai Martin) receives a white Girl Story doll for her birthday — and Bow (Tracee Ellis ross) brings her daughter to the store to exchange “Winnie” for a black doll. There they encounter a very perky (and somewhat obtuse) saleswoman (played by Happy Endings‘ Casey Wilson), who is more than happy to show Bow and Diane to the area of the store where the black dolls are sold.

And that’s when things get really uncomfortable. Bow is horrified to discover that the Girl Story’s two black dolls are the runaway slave Sassy Sadie (a reference to American Girl’s first African-American doll, a former slave girl named Addy) and Sassy Selma, a civil-rights leader with 11 children. Serious kudos to the black-ish prop department for creating these fake dolls with such detail. Take a minute to admire the boxes, first for Sassie Sadie:

Photo: ABC
Photo: ABC

And now Sassy Selma:

Photo: ABC
Photo: ABC

Is there an Emmy for Outstanding Use of Satire Via Props? If so, black-ish is a lock.

Black-ish airs Wednesday nights at 9:30 p.m. on ABC. Watch clips and full episodes of black-ish at Yahoo View.

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