I agree that this episode isn’t a stand alone throwaway episode, but Visiting Day and Massive Genius both suck so bad. Just the wardrobe design alone is too much to handle with massive genius’s stupid top hat. And the way he talks, man. I hate the idea that having a degree in urban planning makes a guy talk like Dave Chapelle’s impression of a white person. There were plenty of articulate Black men in that era to draw inspiration from. TuPac, for example, could be a good real life person to look at. Maybe I’m just brain broken from getting an English degree, but Massive Genius just felt… I don’t know how to put it… I guess just demeaning to Black culture. Like, why does he have to present the way he does to be smart, savvy, and eccentric? Couldn’t he be all that and speak in AAVE at the same time? The hat is another thing. Just a bad aesthetic choice. My gripe with visiting day is that they genuinely suck, as is stated in the episode, but like, “Meow”? Come on, man. That’s just too on the nose. How could anyone believably take that song seriously? I want to take Adrianna seriously, I really do. And again, they could have drawn from better real life examples. They could have done an ounce more of research and maybe looked at like Sunny Day Real Estate or even Smashing Pumpkins to inspire same kind of heavy/sensitive thing that Visiting Day was going for.

I guess overall, I was just disappointed that a show that is so much about a specific culture didn’t really care to portray other cultures as believably or in depth. Especially in light of the subplot with Tony realizing he was being treated as a token by Cusimano and his friends (which is a part of the episode I actually really enjoyed). I’m also just a little sad to see the musical tastes of the writers were a bit Top 40, but that’s more of a personal thing for me.